Just getting into Smartthings this holiday season i created my first SmartApps to turn outdoor electric on at sunset and off at at 11pm. As the seasons change, my outdoor outlets are used completely differently. In the Spring, the same outlets that turned lights on when the sky turned dark will be active during daylight. Rather then change the times on the Apps, i think it would be nice to be able to have the winter and spring schedules assigned to different SmartApps and simply have a toggle to inactivate the one that isnt current. Being new at this, i already have 30 devices in my system. As time goes on, i will easily break 100 devices and i dont want to delete and have to create the SmartApps each season.
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Nice idea. Christmas lights are a great example here.
There is a sort of clumsy way you could do this using a virtual switch as the season indicator. Have each app look at the state of the virtual switch to decide whether to run or not. Then you just change the seasons by changing the virtual switch. If you need more than two settings, you could use a virtual dimmer in the same way.
Takes me back to thinking about hierarchical modes, because really that’s what you’re talking about. If you had a higher level mode you could have a mode for each season, and the apps would be restricted to only run during the correct season.
Or you could create a date range restriction and build that into each app. App only runs when current date is in the range specified at app install.