There’s a little more to it than that. There is an option under hello home actions to control a light from a motion sensor, but you have to also be changing the mode or the option doesn’t even appear. However, the good thing is that from a hello home action, you can control events for devices from different device classes all off the same motion sensor trigger. See:
Hello all, I am having an issue with the Hello, Home actions. Hopefully I’m not overlooking something simple but its entirely possible (I’m brand new to ST, just received my hub starter kit yesterday). First, some background info:
Phone: iPhone 6+ iOS 8.2
SmartThings app: v1.6.8
SmartThings hub firmware: can’t find, but the app says it’s up to date
As far as I can tell, everything is fully updated.
The issue:
I’m trying to create a new Hello, Home action that only runs when a motion sensor (ST brand, included in my starter kit) senses motion. The motion sensor is paired with the hub and in Things I can see that it is tracking/reporting when motion starts/stops and sensing temperature. It runs perfectly fine in conjunction with SmartApps and 3rd party apps. However, when creating the …
And this topic lists some of the differences between using a shortcut group or using a hello home action:
This could all change in the future, but as of March 2015 there are a few functionality differences between Shortcut Groups and Hello Home Actions I thought it would be helpful to document. Please add more if you know of them.
All of the following apply to features of the standard mobile app, not custom code.
Trigger after inaction on motion sensor: Available through SG, not available in HHA
Turn off after a specified number of minutes available in SG, not HHA
Trigger a light from a motion sensor you can do this in both, but they have different names. In a shortcut group, it is “turn on when there is motion.” In HHA, it is “turn on when things start happening” and for the HHA, it is only available if you are also changing the mode. The advantage of using in an HHA is that you can…