Changing Action Time

If I set up the basic switch automation to turn a light on at, say, 4 PM – and I’m making the edit at 5 PM – the light does not come on after finishing the set up.

In other words, the controller seems to trigger time-based events when that time of day occurs, but it doesn’t check to see if a changed configuration means the trigger should’ve already been issued.

Is that by design? Or is there some other step I need to take to make these kinds of updates have effect immediately?

That’s correct behavior. You are scheduling an event for 4 PM. So it’s going to be checked at 4 PM. If it’s already 5 PM at the time that you make the change, it’s not going to be checked again until 4 PM the next day.

Almost all automations in SmartThings are of the “trigger event” type. You are setting up a rule so that when there is a specific change, that causes your automation to fire.

In this case, the change is the time getting to 4 PM.

The automations are not “do while” rules because that would require continuous evaluation of all possible triggers every second, which would be much higher traffic and need much more expensive equipment.

So when you create a rule, you are defining the starting trigger for that rule. The rule will then fire the next time that starting trigger statement is true. In this case, your starting trigger is “when the time changes to 4 PM.” Your rule is only being checked once a day, at 4 PM.

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Thanx for the quick reply, and the explanation. It helps explain a number of things I’ve noticed.

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