IFTTT + Ring Doorbell + GE Link Light? (With delayed on)

[jplee3]

Hey all,

New to SmartThings and just got my hub today! Got it setup pretty quickly and have been messing around with it. Granted, I only have one device connected to the hub right now - a GE Link Bulb in the front porch haha. Anyway, I also have a Ring Doorbell and just setup an IFTTT trigger to turn on the front porch light when motion is detected or when the doorbell is rung. And I setup a SmartApp lighting automation/power allowance to turn the light off after 5 minutes. It seems to work well, but I was wondering if there’s a way to accomplish a couple more things in this context/scenario:

1. Configure a delay (anywhere from 1-30 seconds) before the light turns on.
2. Only allow this rule to run at night and not during the day (I would guess this would probably have to be first implemented by the Ring Doorbell’s motion detection but it would also be a nice option to not have IFTTT trip the light if it’s day time - don’t know if there’s a ‘stop’ that could be setup from the ST side).

Anyone have ideas on how either of those two items could be accomplished?

[JDRoberts]

Welcome!

There are a couple of different ways that this can be done. They all have multiple steps, and I’m afraid I’m not feeling too well tonight so somebody else will have to write out the details for you. But you can certainly end up with the result that you want.

There is a potential problem, though, which is how much lag you get from IFTTT. This just varies from one person’s house to another. At my house it’s a pretty consistent eight seconds, which would be a little long for a porch light application, but might be acceptable. But there are people who report lags of this much as eight or nine minutes, and IFT TT themselves says it can be up to 15 ( minutes, not seconds). So you may just have to try it at your house to see if the lag is acceptable.

As far as limiting when it runs, that’s super easy. You’ll go ahead and let the IFTTT recipe run, you’ll just catch it on the SmartThings side and not turn the light on if it’s outside of your prescribed boundaries. Again, lots of different ways to do that, including just setting a time range or a mode.

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Don’t worry if you don’t understand anything in the next paragraphs, I’m just putting it here in case anybody else wants to write up the details. SmartThings is a very powerful system, but not very intuitive so the methods can get pretty complicated. There are probably other ways to do this as well, this is just what occurred to me first.

For anybody else who wants to give the detailed answer, the two obvious methods are using core or using a daisy chain where The Ring button turns on a virtual switch (IFTTT recipe) which has a power allowance limit (smart lighting), turns itself off, and the real light subscribes to the off event (using smart lighting would be fine). So for the second method you need a virtual switch with a power allowance off smart lighting automation and the second smart lighting automation to have the real switch follow the virtual switch. And the IFTTT recipe.

If you want to vary how long the real light stays on for, you’re going to need a second virtual switch and two more smart lighting automations. So the first virtual switch is the timer for the delay before the light comes on, and the second virtual switch is the timer for the delay before the light goes off again. So at that point maybe Core is easier.

Also… You can control it with mode, but you probably won’t need to, there is a Time of day restriction option in smart lighting even if you use the power allowance feature.

If you need it, there’s a virtual timer how to in the community – created wiki

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_create_a_virtual_timer_for_a_light

[RLDreams (Really Living the Dream)]

@JDRoberts

, the two obvious methods are using core or using a daisy chain where The Ring button turns on a virtual switch (IFTTT recipe) which has a power allowance limit (smart lighting), turns itself off, and the real light subscribes to the off event (using smart lighting would be fine). So for the second method you need a virtual switch with a power allowance off smart lighting automation and the second smart lighting automation to have the real switch follow the virtual switch. And the IFTTT recipe.

Virtual momentary button and power allowance was my first thought too. IFTT triggers button, if between hours of _____ and ____ momentary button triggers light, power limit on light to shut off after 5 minutes. Too early for me to go into details of signing up for and linking IDE account and creating virtual devices, but there are plenty of threads on the subject.

[jplee3]

Thanks guys! I solved the 2nd problem by creating the virtual switch via the API website (I wonder why they don’t offer the ability to do this in the app itself…). Anyway, it seems to work though I haven’t tested it out at night but I have the sunrise/sunset condition setup (in this case, it’s “from sunset to sunrise turn this switch on”). To sort of test it, I reversed the rule to be “from sunrise to sunset turn this switch on” and it seemed to work as expected, so I anticipate it will work for the other case. Guess I’ll find out at/after sunset!

I’ll move on to tackle the 1st problem shortly, but it does seem a bit more complex. I’m might be OK with leaving it as is though. I guess I just wanted to simulate the time it takes for someone to get to the door and turn the light on (I would say it’s not uncommon for there to a 5-10 second delay from the time someone rings the doorbell to the light actually being turned on by the resident)

[ady624 (I hate Mondays)]

A very similar thread with an example here: Ring Video Doorbell

[jplee3]

Thanks! I saw that earlier and was asking what the major difference(s) or advantage(s) are in using CoRE over the IFTTT integration explicitly for this purpose. I know with CoRE there are many more complex rules to setup so I may need to look into it for that later but right now it’s just turning on the porch light when the Ring is set off… now, if there were some local processing occurring where IFTTT is cut out completely, that would really be great

[ady624 (I hate Mondays)]

For now, the only way to bring your Ring into the ST ecosystem is through use of IFTTT. CoRE will not obsolete IFTTT, it can replace the use of virtual momentary buttons or switches. But IFTTT is a key element until ST releases their Ring integration.

[jplee3]

So the solution with adding the virtual switch and only coming on at night/overnight seems to be working out pretty well for me. As far as the delay, I’m not as concerned with that… especially because there’s generally a delay of several seconds to begin with between the motion detection and the light actually turning on. I will probably try to mess around with delays if I pick-up another smart bulb - then I would try to set either one to have a longer delay before turning on. It would be a bit too obvious if both the porch light and inside light were to come on at the same time. Staggering would be much more preferable

[UsedJeans]

Hi JPLee3,

I don’t know if you’ve completely solved your issue, but I just wrote a script that would get called by accessing a URL. In the URL, you must include things like your Maker events (to turn on the light as well as turn off the light if wanted), your Zip Code, and your Maker service token. You would then create an Applet in IFTTT that would take the input of your Ring motion detection, then call my URL. My URL would check to see if it was nighttime and only run your turn on light Maker applet if it was. You can take a look at my write-up of the Nighttime script/API at https://redd.it/6ss0ak.

Let me know if you have any questions.

UsedJeans