Combined On and Off routines?

General Discussion
1

I’m sure I’m missing this some place, but I have a camera setup that I would like to use motion detection only during certain hours of the day. Right now I have one routine that turns motion detection on at a set time and another routine that turns it off at a different time. Is it possible within ST to combine those two into a single routine? I can see several cases where this basic recipe would be used and having all those routines would clutter up the ST app very quickly.

2

I would say use mode is better. Run the camera in that mode between time a to B. Use the routine to change the mode.

2 Likes
3

Thanks Ray. I’m just starting the leave the kiddie pool area of HA and have not messed around much with Modes.

1 Like
4

Okay, I’m going to try and walk thru a logical Mode and Routine setup to run my cameras the way that I want them to run. I would love to get some feedback on this to see if I’m doing it correctly or if there is a better way to do it. As a note, I don’t have the app in front of me, so hopefully I don’t miss something due to that.

Outline
I have a total of 5 cameras that I will be trying control/schedule. Cameras A-D I want to motion detect from say, 2230 to 0430 Sunday thru Friday and from 2300 to 0530 on Friday and Saturday. Camera E I want to have motion detect from 1830 to 0700 every day. I also want all 5 cameras to motion detect when there is nobody at home.

I’ve have the following Modes setup for my system:

Home
Away
Morning
Day
Evening
Night

Scheduling Cameras A-D
Turning them on

  1. Create a Routine that changes the Mode to Night at 2230 Sun-Fri.
  2. Create a Routine that changes the Mode to Night at 2300 Fri-Sat.
  3. Create a Routine that when the Mode changes to Night, activate motion detection on cameras A-D.

Turning them off

  1. Create a Routine that changes the mode to Morning at 0430 Sun-Fri.
  2. Create a Routine that changes the mode to Morning at 0530 Fri-Sat.
  3. Create a Routine that when the Mode changes to Morning, deactivate motion detection on cameras A-D.

Scheduling Camera E
Turning it on

  1. Create a Routine that changes the Mode to Evening at 1830 every day.
  2. Create a Routine that when the Mode changes to Evening, activate motion detection on camera E.

Turning it off

  1. Create a Routine that changes the mode to Day at 0700 every day.
  2. Create a Routine that when the Mode changes to Day, deactivate motion detection on camera E.

Controlling All Cameras

  1. Create a Routine that changes the Mode to Away when everyone leaves.
  2. Create a Routing that activates motion detection on all cameras when the Mode is changed to Away.
  3. Create a Routine that changes the Mode to Home when someone returns.
  4. Create a Routine that deactivates motion detection on all cameras when the Mode changes to Home.

I believe that will do what I want it to do. One of the things I’m not sure about is if I need to add camera E to activate motion detection when the Mode changes to Night, or will it keep it’s settings from the Evening Mode since no further commands were given to it during the Night Mode change?

If the above plan works, that is a total of 14 Routines that I have to setup. That is going to make the Routines section of the app very cluttered. Is there a way to group them so it just shows up as one entry?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for all the noob help!

Keith