How do you handle disabling routines for holidays? For instance, I have a routine that turns off lights at a certain time everyday because it’s generally expected people in my house are no longer here (school / work / etc).
It would be great if there was a “holiday list” or “vacation list” that you could have as a condition to not run a routine but I’ve not seen anything out there like this.
One simple suggestion is to create a virtual switch “Holiday” and use it as a precondition for your other routines. Then you just need to turn the switch on/off for the holiday(s).
Agree this would work if you remember to turn it off beforehand but I was looking for something a bit more automated. Is there any way to set a specific date to run a routine like “Jan 20, 2025”?
I found somewhat of a hack using a combination of Alexa “alarms” and ST. You can set an alarm for a specific date and once the alarm is dismissed which is automatic after one hour, it can run a routine which could then trigger a way to set that it’s a holiday in ST. You would need one alarm for each holiday and reset them each year but it could accomplish the goal to be more automated. I just can’t believe that this is the most of the shelf available solution.
There used to be a pretty good calendar integration that would read from Google Calendar and turn a switch / virtual switch on and off when an event with a particular search term started and ended; I used it for things like babysitter presence but it would have worked for holidays too. The only way I’m aware of to do it now is via IFTTT, then that virtual switch can be used as a precondition the same way @art_333 suggested above. It would only take two IFTTT routines, one for on and one for off, which is within your 3 free if you don’t have any other rules on there.
You can use @Mariano_Colmenarejo Aplicaciones Virtuales Mc driver to create a virtual calendar to turn your virtual holiday switch [that was recommended by @art_333] on and off.