I’m trying to understand why Smartthings made the changes to device delays in Routines. If there is a ‘real’ reason for this change, WHERE was the notification posted? Thank you.
The App Store would have shown a description of changes.
The “why” is usually not explained, but in the SmartThings app Menu tab there’s a section called Notices where it communicates important changes like new features, end of support for Android versions, etc.
The delay feature is good to have but think twice before using it, most of the time you don’t want a delay but a “keep this state for a certain time”, especially for auto-offs, motion sensor routines or even a sequence of actions spanning a long time. A routine with a delay cannot be canceled and may have side effects. “If plug is on, wait 5 minutes and turn plug off” is not the same than “if plug is on for 5 minutes, turn plug off” which is usually the intended behaviour.
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I frequently use delays within a routine. I live in Florida and have a cabin in Michigan. I find it very useful to have lights go on and off in areas of my house to help it look like someone is home. The first night after the change, even though the notification said that the change would not affect my setup, it did. I’m just trying to understand the purpose of the change…
Do you have to change current routines that use a delay? I currently have 2 routines for bathroom fans. When you turn the fan on the routine turns the fan off 7 minutes later. Both routines currently work perfectly for thier intended purpose.
What changes are you seeing? I am aware that they have added the ability to add explicit delays between actions in Routines, but I am not aware of any changes to the functionality that already existed. I am not clear how that would even be possible without changing the functionality of the rules engine which would be unforgivable.
NM. Not really sure what was changed or why but I just edited the two routines I had, deleted and then re-added the delay. Now they look the same, work the same, but I no longer get a warning message when I open the routine…
You can control the same device multiple times in a routine now.
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When I look at routines that had a delay incorporated, I get a warning that the automation has changed. Previously the routine would have “turn off (delay 6 hours)” and now it has “delay 6 hours” as an independent step, followed by “turn off”. This looks like it will allow for a lot more flexibility in creating routines but I haven’t had time to actually play with it yet.
Ah I see.
The Routines you see in the editor are recreated from lower level Rules on the fly so it sounds like the Rules that implemented ‘turn off (delay)’ have the same structure as those that implement ‘delay’ followed by ‘turn off’. So its probably a new interpretation of the same code in order to support new functionality in the Routines editor.
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Having said that, I see that both the delayed action and the auto-off are explicitly no longer supported, and the auto-off in particular was certainly implemented using a command/sleep/command ‘group’.
If we assume that ‘group’ does what it looks like it does (it not being documented) it isn’t at all obvious why the old and new functionality couldn’t coexist.
It may be that is an incorrect assumption and the group was just a helper to reconstruct the Routine.