Getting a Routine to Happen Automatically with Presence Sensors

[JDRoberts]

This may have nothing to do with it, but just in case…

A common area of confusion for people new to SmartThings is that a routine will not run at all if you include the mode change and your house was already set to that particular mode before the routine started.

So if if by chance you have your arrival routine set to change the mode to “home” and your house is already in “home” when you test, and nothing will happen.

The following is a clickable link. It is a FAQ on why returning home routines often have to be set up one for each person, because the first person coming home will cause the mode to change to home and then The routine doesn’t run for the second person coming home. I know that’s not the exact issue you’re seeing, but just in case it’s related this might be of interest:

FAQ: Routine Only Seems to Work for First Person Who Comes Home

Updated 12 November 2015 At some point, there was a change and now routines WILL run even if the house is in the mode you’re going to change into. That’s good, it’s just confusing because it’s unclear if this is now always true or only sometimes. Until there’s some official documentation, I’ll leave the rest of this in place as it’s one of those “can’t hurt, might help” things. Possibly this is a mode issue. It did exist as a problem with v one, but only with hello home actions, not with shortcut groups. It’s pretty simple once you understand what’s going on, it’s just there’s nothing anywhere that tells you that this is what’s going to happen with routines. OK if you have a routine that changes the mode, then nothing in that routine will run if the house is already in that mode. That’…

There is no built in way to toggle modes through the SmartThings mobile app. Fortunately, You can easily set up a test routine that does nothing except change to a new mode called test and use that.

FAQ: How to Add a New Location Mode, or Manually Change from One Location Mode to Another (Classic App)

on September 15, 2016, an update was released to the android and iOS smartthings mobile apps which removed the ability to add a new mode through the app. Hopefully this was just a glitch and it will be re-added soon. Meanwhile, you can still add a new mode through the IDE. Instructions in the following thread. ======================================================= Many people use modes to manage which actions are automatically triggered. To begin with, Smartthings starts you out with a few basic modes, like Home and Away. However, many people like to add additional modes. For example, I distinguish between Night, which is when we have a lot of lights turn on when there is motion, and Asleep, when the same movement will not turn on the ceiling lights, but will turn on a soft night li…

Anyway, I understand this may have nothing to do with the issue you’re seeing but just in case, I thought I would share the information. It often comes up when testing arrival routines.