I am using the built-in smart lighting SmartApp to auto turn on / off a light switch based on motion / no motion for x minutes. However, the problem is if I manually turn on the same switch, it won’t auto turn off after x minutes anymore. I even created another smart lighting SmartApp to just turn off the switch if no motion after x minutes, but that doesn’t work either. Any ideas?
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I’ve noticed this as well. Supposedly, you want “power Allowance”, but I’ve had mixed results with this too.
the built-in Smart Lighting app has been quite unreliable as of late. I moved all of my lighting controls/automations over to Rule Machine - you can find it here Rule machine - as per the app developer, this app is no longer available for new installs, distribution, or support
When you manually turn on the light, is it showing as ‘on’ in the Mobile App? I’m wondering if some how the Mobile App is never seeing it manually being turned on and therefore doesn’t know it needs to turn it off.
I think the problem is that it needs the “no motion” event to trigger the timer to turn off. That’s what Smart Lighting subscribes to. It doesn’t even know that the light was turned on manually. Are the motion events not being triggered when you turn it on manually?
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Yes I used power allowance but got mixed results too.
When I manually turn on the switch, the app knows it - and I get a alert for it and can see in the list of things that the switch is now ON.
Never heard of Rule Machine, I’ll look into that. Thanks
I just meant that Smart Lighting SmartApp doesn’t know about it. It actually never knows about the state of the light. Based on the rule, it would only care about the motion sensor(s). When it sees a motion event, it sends on() to the light. When the motion sensor goes to ‘no motion’, it starts the timer and after x minutes, it sends off() to the light. The state of the light is irrelevant to that process.
If the light is manually turned ‘on’ when the motion sensor is already at ‘no motion’, then Smart Lighting will take no action because the motion sensor state is not changing. This isn’t a flaw in Smart Lighting per se, but it is a narrowness in the logic. There has to be a trigger for Smart Lighting to function, and the trigger you set up is based on the motion sensor(s). If that device isn’t changing state, then that Smart Lighting rule has no reason to take action.
You should have much better luck with Rule Machine because it subscribes to all states of all devices.