I have a problem, it cannot be my problem solely. Most of my house I rarely use just walk through to get to high use rooms. For example, during the day I am rarely in my master bedroom but I do need to go into master bathroom. To get in there I walk through my master bedroom to get to bathroom. I would like the master bedroom to turn on the lights with motion for 1 minute to allow to see in the bedroom while I’m walking through the room. That is the easy part. But what if I want to take a nap? Now I go in my bedroom and if dog moves or I move, all the lights come on.
TL;DR: I want to be able to override motion via a switch or any thoughts on how to do that?
Well, what seems to be a no-brainer, is actually a PIA to achieve in the SmartThings universe. First of all, you cannot cancel motion events and run that instance locally (without internet), unless you come up with a mode restriction. In order to have a peaceful nap, you will need to either create your own app or use a community developed app. There are several that are available, but I recommend CoRE, which can do anything you want, except for turning your lights off if your internet goes down.
An alternative to CoRE, is the “Motion Lighting”, but its developer is no longer active in the community, so adding new features and/or fixing bugs may be problematic.
1 Like
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
3
I put a motion sensor under the bed so when I’m walking across the room, the lights will go on but nothing will happen if I’m sleeping on the bed. Now, your dog is another problem…
1 Like
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
5
There are lots of ways to do this. The way I do it uses a Minimote by the bedside (hey, taking a nap). When I press one of the buttons, it turns out the lights, and changes “something” that disables motion. By “something”, I’ve used more than one approach. At present I use Rule Machine to do it, but that’s no longer available. I used to use a mode to do it, and mode restricted the motion app. That worked for me. A third way would be to use CoRE, with a variable that says you are in “nap”, and use that to not allow motion to turn on the lights.
There also needs to be a mechanism to “end the nap”. That too I do with a Minimote.
Here is an app that I wrote after the “demise” of Rule Machine. It will allow you to do what you want. If your running a V2 hub keep in mind that this is going to run in the cloud and not locally. Core will also do this but if you want something without a huge learning curve, this should work for you.
You will need to create a “Simulated Do Not Disturb Switch” or as is the case in my bedroom, I just use the “Box Fan Outlet” as a switch to disable the motion sensor. You can have more than one switch to disable the motion sensor. The switch must be “ON” for it to disable the motion sensor. I have also incorporated a delay off function and a lux value if you should need them. You can also tell it what level to set dimmable switches/bulbs if you have them. I have no colored bulbs so it will not change bulb colors. You can set modes that it will work in but I never got around to adding time and day of the week restrictions. I have half a dozen instances of this running in my home and have had no issues but…
I assume no liablity for any errors, ommission, lousy coding (this is one of my first apps) or sleepless nights this app may cause. Use it at your own risk
The other thing that this app does is it will keep your lights in the same state that they are when you enable the Do Not Disturb Switch. If they are on, such as in my oiffce" they will stay on. If they are off, like when I want to take a nap, they will stay off.
Also, The app requires that you tell it what lights to turn off as well as what lights to turn on. I can’t remember why I did it that way but I think it had something to do with my lack of coding knowledge. In some cases, it might be useful I suppose.
If you have any questions ask. I am not on the forums everyday so it may be a couple days or so before I get back to you. If you decide to use it, I hope it works as well for you as it does for me. There is another fellow on here that I gave a copy to so, if he is around, might be able to respond quicker than I can.
Thanks for this, I’m going to try this out today. This seems like such a simple problem to overcome but I’ve yet to find anything that works very well. Fingers crossed!
This can also be accomplished with CoRE too if you use that.
I also have another version that I use in my living room. It monitors the lux value of my living room aeon sensor and adjusts the level of my 3 ge light bulbs. I live in Michigan so cloudy is the norm. I need some lighting on most of the day but the level changes. If interested, I can post it too. I know the code could be cleaned up (I’m not a groovy programmer) but it does work well for me.
Any questions let me know. I check the forums most everyday.