While I was able to transition 90% of my automations to Routines, and wasn’t able to do them all— and I’m okay with that (for now). But what I didn’t realize was just how limiting the Notification routines were. Even something as simple as being notified when a door is open, but only ONCE Every XX time. That way if someone opens the door, I get notified once, but I don’t want 20 subsequent notifications immediately afterwards when we’re coming in/out to say bring in groceries….
Custom Monitoring Smart App was perfect for that. Will the new RULES API give us back that flexibility??
You can use a virtual switch to get this behaviour.
Do something like:
On opening of the real door, have a routine set the virtual switch on, with an automatic turn off in XX minutes.
Set a routine to notify you when the virtual switch is turned on.
You’ll only be notified at most every XX minutes on the door opening. If you want to be notified that the door is still open after XX minutes that’s a different set of logic.
Update: Did some tweaks to add Location Mode conditional logic, but worked like a charm! Thanks so much. I think that was the last few remaining things I needed to figure out to replace Smart Apps. Think you saved me from moving completely over to Hubitat.
You can use virtual timed switches for all sorts of logic, adding multiples where needed to track state. No its not as easy as webcore variables/logic or some of the use cases that previous Groovy SmartApps provided but for simple stuff like this, they work fine.
Yep been using Virtual switches and virtual Contact sensors for many things already. Especially with integration with Google Home and Alexa. Just didn’t think it through how I can manipulate it for notifications delays. Very creative. Thanks.
