Okay as I understand it, I should be moving my stuff out of Smart Lighting and Webcore and into automations and scenes.
So today I decided to start doing that. So 2 questions which I’m sure have been answered many times before but I couldn’t find a direct answer.
create an automation to turn light on with motion and off after no motion for say 5 minutes. That will require 2 automations? 1 for on with motion and 1 for off after 5 minutes no motion.
Is my thinking correct?
If I want to turn a group of lights on and off based on different triggers in an “or” statement. That would be a scene for the group of lights on, and 1 for off.
Then 2 automations to call the 2 different scenes when the various switches are triggered?
Is this correct?
Thanks for dumbing it down for me and any help to the obvious I’m missing.
For your first question, the Automations will let you do this in one as there is an “auto turn off” selection where you can set the 5 minute time.
Webcore is still better for me because I prefer to have the light turn off when motion stops, which isn’t possible in a single Automation so far as I can tell, so two Automations are required.
In general, I find I’m losing a lot of efficiency that I was able to achieve by grouping multiple conditions in Webcore that now require individual Automations with the built in automation functionality.
While it is not something I am actively encouraging, it is certainly something I would support. I have not only removed all my Smart Lighting automations and webCoRE pistons, but I have deleted both apps.
Yes, I believe that is correct. The first one responds to motion being active and turns the light on. The second one responds to motion being inactive and remaining that way for five minutes, and then turns the light off.
That isn’t really any different to what you’d be doing in Smart Lighting or webCoRE. It is just that those allow you to do it within the one automation/piston. There seems to be a stigma associated with using two Automations that I don’t really understand. It should be possible to do it in one Rule in the underlying Rules API, though I have had issues with the ‘remains’ condition not being triggered in a similarly constructed rule and I do it with two.
That sounds correct. Scenes in SmartThings are not reversible so you need one Scene to turn the lights on, and another Scene to turn the lights off, and yes again you need one Automation for the ‘on’ case and one for the ‘off’.
Thank you both for replying, it’s good to know that I am stumbling down the right constantly varying path.
My reason for moving stuff based out of Webcore and Smart Lighting is (as I understand it to be coming) those apps will become non functional in the near future. How near is anybody’s guess? With that, I was under the understanding that if things are setup in automations that the inevitable conversion later could be easier than if you were still heavily relying on Smart Lighting and Webcore.
Thanks again for the replies and I’ll continue with creating 2 automations to perform 1 easy on \ off task.
My gripe with this is that when I create the automation for the turn off after 5 mins of no motion. That automation moves to the cloud and no longer becomes eligible for local execution. That is odd how a simple 5 minute delay requires the cloud.
You are right, i have missed that part. Only issue is that some sensors have cool down period of 3 and more minutes hardcoded in motion sensor firmware.
I believe in the automation creation there is an option to delay the event (the action part) a set amount of time. I have never used this yet, so you’ll have to give it a test.!
