Considering a smartthings purchase and wondered if any of you can think of a way that it may help me with an issue I have.
I have a Hue lighting system in my house and many of the lights are on motion sensors. As the bedroom light isnt on a motion sensor, my partner will turn the light off and on at the switch rather than get her phone out. The issue is that she then leaves the light on when leaving the room and forgets to turn it off in the Hue app.
Obviously a motion sensor wouldnt be practical here so can anyone think of a way the smartthings system may help us not leave the light on for hours in this example?
I’m curious… why isn’t a Motion Sensor practical? I have one in my bedroom. It’s carefully oriented to only detect motion at the doorway. Any other movements within the room don’t trigger it.
When ST detects someone in bed (via a door contact or similar) the start a timer…
x minutes later… the light goes out…
Can also be configured to turn a dim light on if you get out of bed during the night
Also can be configured to turn off at any time (after x. minutes) on a door contact (assuming you close the door when leaving the room)
Thinking the hue switch may be the only way unfortunately as she doesn’t close the door so motion sensor would be only other option but not practical most of the time
This is a common issue whether you have a motion sensor or not, and the easiest way is just to add an alternative switch which doesn’t cut the power to the Hue.
Then your motion sensor can turn the light off.
See the following FAQ, but in your case, just adding a Hue dimmer switch on the wall and having her use that when she wants to use a physical switch will probably be the simplest solution.
If you want to smartthings you would have a wider variety of switch devices to use, but then you would be spending more money to solve what is a pretty simple issue.
