I want to lock a door if garage is left open x min

I want to lock the door that goes into my house from garage if the garage is left open.

Can this be done with out of the box SmartThings or does anyone have smartapp recommendation. Not CORE that’s overkill for this task and haven’t needed it yet.

You can do it with the official features plus one virtual Switch, but it’s a little Hacky because you have to daisychain with the virtual switch.

Assuming your garage door can report as an open/close sensor, then you would use smart home monitor with a custom notification and “alert with lights” when the garage door was detected as being open for X minutes.

Only instead of turning on a light, turn on a virtual switch.

Then set up a routine to lock the door which is triggered when that virtual switch turns on and which also turns that virtual switch off again.

That should do it, but like I said, a little Hacky.

An IOS option

If you have an iOS device and you’re willing to spend an extra $10, this is the kind of thing that the third-party smart rules app does really really well. :sunglasses:

http://smartrulesapp.com

Clean, easy to maintain, easy install. But it’s not available for android.

1 Like

If you already have CoRE or webCoRE installed then it’s not overkill at all imho, you already have the tools.

1 Like

Like I said I have not needed core yet. My issue with core is it gives SmartThings an excuse not to improve their rules system while at the same time they say they don’t support it if it doesn’t work. They blame “custom apps”. I got burned by Rule Machine so I try to use official Smart Things apps when possible. When not I tend to just write my own smart app because then I can debug it on my own if their are issues.

I only mentioned CORE because every time I ask how to do something someone with CORE jumps in and says use CORE and then I don’t get the answer I am looking for. Of course even saying I don’t want to use it that is the answer I get haha.

Thanks @JDRoberts I was thinking a virtual switch could work I actually wrote a stateless version just for this sort of thing so I don’t have to shut it off to keep it working. I may just try that solution first. If it doesn’t work I will just write a quick smart app to do it.

3 Likes

Decided to just write the smart app. Just in case anyone finds this thread and wants the same or a starting point to write something close here it is.

2 Likes