Create A Vacation Routine?

OK used Vacation Lighting Director & set times. Now will this auto start when we are away? (Away is the button I checked)
The other problem I have is while I was out today about 25 miles away from home I checked Smartthings. It said I was present in the house when I was not. How can I correct this or do I just need to tap the Arm (Away) button on the Dashboard.
Thanks for all the help it has been a real learning experience.
Mike

The key to using SmartThings as a home automation platform, is to understand routines and modes and have them fire automatically. It sounds like you’re well on your way if you’ve already installed Vacation Lighting Director.

So to automate this, you don’t even have to create a new routine or mode. Start by making sure you set up presence and it works. We use our phones are presence, and it typically works great. The next step is to automatically run routines when your presence changes. On your Goodbye! routine, change it to run automatically when, say, everyone leaves. You can then also arm Smart Home Monitor and change mode to Away. So then when you leave, the mode will change to Away and SHM will be armed.

Similarly, change the I’m Back! routine to automatically run when anyone arrives. Set it to change mode to Home and disarm SHM. So when you arrive, the mode will change to Home and SHM will be disarmed.

Now set Vacation Light Director to only run when mode is Away, and voila! you have home automation :slight_smile:. You can use the same concept for any SmartApp or SmartLighting rule.

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Looked at Android Phones & they say present how can I check to see if they are working?

I was able to setup Goodby & I’m Back so that looks to be done.
Again thanks for the help
Mike

Is the app running on the phone and have them access to location services? The app can be running in the background.

Some phones work better than others. I have 2 onePluses and a Nexus 5p. Get good reporting on all of them. You will also need to set up your location adjust your zone.

You can look at the phone’s Notification in ST and see if they have reported away/back.

If you set smartlighting to run when mode is away then it should fire.

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Notifications have been sent that both phones have arrived home. So looks to me everything is now working. We will see this weekend.
Thanks for all the help
Mike

Sorry @siam,

I was running out of the office when I typed up the reply.

Here is a pictorial of Routine and Mode setup for your Vacation.














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I have not used this app in a while but it worked very well for me a couple of times when I was on vacation.

lmosenko
Thanks for the great pictorial. I have it setup step by step like you showed.
Last question
When we leave all I need to do is tap the routine & it will work until I return home & turn off.
I have realized I need to keep my Mobile Data on ( Something I have not done before) & also keep GPS on.
Thanks Mike

Mobile presence for both IOS and ANDROID requires you to have WIFI/GPRS/Cell Data active. IOS manages it a bit different than ANDROID, but for both, you need to have it active. FYI, in order to change to I’M Back routine, you will need to set it to automatically activate when “Someone arrives”.

I have all ready done the I am Back
Thanks for the help
Mike

For some reason, well at least on iPhone, I can’t create “modes”. I had to go here, https://graph.api.smartthings.com/, to create a new mode, look under locations, and select your hub (mine is called home).

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ST took that option out of both IOS and Android apps :unamused:

Sorry about that. I didn’t update my original post. ST has recently forced all to use the IDE in order to create Modes.

If you automatically have Good Night executing when things quiet down you will want to set Good Night to not “automatically do this if I am in one of these modes” when in vacation mode. Or Good Night willl execute and take you out of Vacation Mode.
You can check the active mode under “More”, touch the three horizontal bars at the bottom right corner, and the mode is displayed at the top.

Lighting director isn’t firing on and off my set lights, mode is Vacation, yet nothing.

You may want to use the updated version of the vacation smartApp, rather than trying to have a routine do this.

i just installed your App and it works. I wish it had the sunset/sunrise time offset. your add feature isn’t very useful to me as i already have been using smart lighting to turn on certain lights indoors and outdoors, but skill is a nice option.

Hi, does this not work for z wave devices? When I try to select switches none of the z wave switches are shown.

I assume you are using the classic ST app, correct?

You need to configure in settings which switches VLD is allowed to use.

After that, may need you to private message with more specific information.

I have not seen any issue as you describe.

HI,

Thanks for responding. After messing with the app and the online site all night and into the early am I think I figured it out and it was basically enduser error, or me being a noob to smartthings and the way to install apps.