Okay, after trying for a few days, I need the wisdom of the community. Honestly, it shouldn’t be this hard, but here goes…
I want my lights to turn on a half hour before sunset, but only when someone is home, or someone arrives after sunset.
Shouldn’t be that hard, right? Is this possible using just the Hello, Home actions?
This should be easy to setup under the lights and switches menu on the dashboard.
Indeed, you’re right. My wife currently calls SmartThings “DumbThings,” however I have to remind her that the system is only as smart as I make it, and it’s totally on me at this point.
Regular if/then/else logic really can’t get here soon enough.
So what I’ve done is added three new modes: “morning,” “day,” and “evening.” I’m now setting those modes based on actions, and I think I’m in a good place. We’ll see tonight.
Okay, so more detail: I have 7 modes:
Home
Away
Morning
Day
Evening
Night
Midnight
The problem I run into is “I’m Back.” When presence is detected (phone location), I only have the option of setting ONE of these modes - in this case, “home.” When I arrive home, I want to set to “Morning,” “Day,” or “Evening” depending on time of day. Regardless of the time of day, as it’s currently set, “home” is activated, which does not, in turn, set to one of my time-dependent modes.
Check out http://community.smartthings.com/t/thoughts-on-modes/279/58 to see how to deal with home/away day/night mode changes. It should help you address your issue, but it’s going to take a lot of Hello Home actions to cover that many modes.
I created these modes in an attempt to deal with these changes. Before I tried this, I only had 4 modes: Home, Away, Night, and Midnight. Seriously, if we had if/and/or/then/while logic, this would be a piece of cake.