I’m trying to figure out what’s the best practice to achieve certain things. For example:
I currently am using the SmartLighting SA to turn my living room light on whenever my front door is unlocked, as long as it’s between sunset and sunrise. The goal is, when we open the front door when it’s dark outside, we are guaranteed to have lights on in the house. It works great! However, it desperately needs more logic. For example, a problem we run into is:
If we are leaving the house to go out in the evening, I will at times turn on my entry light and turn off the living room light just to save Hue bulb life. Well, the minute we unlock the door to leave the house, the living room light turns back on! Or, if we are watching a movie and have the lights off, if I need to take the dogs out, I’ll use the entry light switch right by the stairs. But again, as soon as I open the door, the living room light turns on. Now, I’ve created more work for myself as I need to constantly turn off the light.
So, I’ve now been thinking about this and the answer is simple; I need to simply have the light automatically turn on, only when the house is empty and someone arrives. The logic is easy. My question is, what solution is the best practice to do so?
Do I configure ST to change my Home’s mode to away, if everyone leaves and thus automatically turn the light off? Then, only turn the light on when someone returns, with the mode setting back to “Home”? Are modes still the current way to do things, or are they being phased out due to the v2 hub and are just around for legacy users?
Am I better off doing this with two separate routines that automatically trigger based on presence?
Or is it best to use something like Rule Machine or SmartRules and do the logic within those apps?
There are so many choices and I’m getting confused on what’s considered best practice at this point.
Thanks!
