If this helps anyone else out, I wanted to provide a tutorial for getting started with Magic Home in SmartThings.
The reason why is that I have just started out using ST and I am waaaay far behind all you guys with the terms and setting up phrases/actions/modes that I got very lost when I was referenced to this thread to give Magic Home a try!
It’s just a basic tutorial, not very detailed but hopefully it helps someone else who is new hehe…
Step 1 - Create Your Home Actions
Note: In this step, you will be creating the actions ran by Magic Home which are used to activate your different home modes.
- Open the SmartThings app on your phone
- At the Dashboard, click the chat bubble icon at the top-right corner
- Click the gear icon at the bottom-right corner
- Click the Add an action button at the bottom and give it a name such as Home Night like Tim mentioned
- Click Next at the top, then select the option Change the mode to
- Select a mode (I used the default Night mode) and click Done
- Make any other configurations if needed
- Click Done again to finish the action
- Repeat steps 1 through 7 again if you want additional actions like Tim mentioned such as Home Day, Away Night, and Away Day. See Tip below.
Tip: In step 9, just to get started, what I did was use the default modes SmartThings provided so Home Night and Away Night both used the Night mode and Home Day and Away Day both used the Home mode. Of course you will want to change this and further add/customize your modes (which will be triggered by your created actions) based on your requirements but it is just used as a starting point for now.
Step 2 - Install the Magic Home App
Note: Magic Home is a SmartApp not a Device Type
- Copy the code at the following link… Magic Home Raw Code
- Go to… My IDE SmartApps
- Click the + New SmartApp button at the right end of the screen
- Click the From Code tab then paste in the code from step 1
- Click the Create button at the bottom
- Once created, click the Save button
- Once saved, click the Publish button and in the drop-down menu select For Me
- If the SmartThings app is already opened on your phone, force close it to refresh
- Reopen the SmartThings app
- At the Dashboard, click the (+) button at the bottom
- Scroll through the categories to the far right end to reach My Apps
- If installed correctly, you should see Magic Home listed
Step 3 - Setup the Magic Home App
- At the Dashboard in the SmartThings app, click the (+) button at the bottom
- Scroll through the categories to the far right end to reach My Apps
- Click the Magic Home app that is listed
- Select Monitor These Presences and select the phones/sensors to be used, then click Done
- For each of the 4 phrases, select the associated home action (that you created in step 1) that you want to be ran. As an example, for the phrase At Least One Person Is Home And It’s Night, I selected the action Home Night that I created from step 1, then clicked Done.
- I got confused on this part, but at the bottom for the select modes section, just reassign the modes for your actions
- Click Next then fill out your zip code so the app knows when to handle sunset and sunrise
- Fill out any other settings such as push notifications, etc.
- Click Done
- Once back at the Dashboard, you will now have a My Apps tile if not already
- Click the My Apps tile and you should see the Magic Home app
Step 4 - Add Devices to a Mode
Note: For this step, I am showing how I added a MotionSensor/Lightbulb combo to my Night mode such that when sunset was reached and I was home, Magic Home would run my Home Night action which would trigger the Night mode which would then trigger the light to turn on everytime I walked by the motion sensor!
- At the Dashboard in the SmartThings app, click the (+) button, and scroll through the categories until you reach Actions, then select Lighting
- Select the option Turn on when there is motion., then select Add new light/switch
- Give the light a name then click Next
- Select the motion sensor to be used, then scroll to the bottom to expand More options
- Select Only when mode is and pick your mode such as Night
- Click Done, then Next, then Done
Tip: For me, step 5 above was the final piece towards getting the whole system working how I wanted it as I needed to tell each device action which mode it could be triggered in.
Summary
As a quick summary, I highly recommend you first create/customize your SmartThings home modes and home actions before starting with Magic Home as once you finished customizing your home modes/actions, they are simply just plug/play into Magic Home which makes it really nice to use.
Also if this helps out, the main reason I am using Magic Home is because (correct me if I’m wrong) it detects on sunset/sunrise if you are already home and under the actions in SmartThings all I could find was when leaving or arriving during those times whereas I wanted when I’m already home, not leaving or arriving.
Great app, very nice work!