Keeping Track of Automations

[darrenofkent]

I’m trying to write down all of the automations I have so my upcoming house sitter doesn’t think my home is possessed. To do so, I had to click through each device in their respective app and write down each automation, then try to organize it somehow (I have come to realize that I really do need to spend some time somewhere in the future rethinking my naming conventions and trying to consolidate automations).

I have a combination of SmartThings devices, app automations, and app routines; IFTTT applets; Stringify flows; Wemo devices and app automations; Meross devices and app automations; Lutron Caseta devices and app automations; and Google Home app routines. And a handful of SmartThings Virtual Switches to talk across platforms (I couldn’t figure out another way).

Everything works fairly well for the most part, but I am looking for any ideas on how best to keep track of all the automations, what platform they are on, what they do, what triggers them, etc. Any ideas of how other users keep track of their automations would be welcome.

[ritchierich]

@bamarayne discussed his approach here:

Your home user manual

So, we had some guest stop by for the weekend and they were extremely curious about all of the automations. They wanted to know about it, what it did, and how to control it. So, I decided my house needs a user manual. Has any one else done this? Do you mind sharing? I’m looking for ideas. Thanks

[bamarayne]

iscussed his approach here

I really need to update this

[rontalley]

Personally, I just put the name of the App behind the name of the rule. That way, I always know what did what when I look at the SmartApp tab on the device page.

However, I mostly use webCoRE to keep things simple and use names that makes sense for my rules.

Dining Room Light (webCoRE)

[Glen_King]

I remember that other thread, and thinking it was amusing.
Now I need to do exactly this. lol

One of the items in that thread is happening: I now have a tablet or phone in (almost) every room. This decision actually emerged from discussions in one of the ‘button’ threads. Because an entire android smartphone can be had, new, for fifteen bucks. So why purchase a button that does one thing, when I can put a dozen icons on the phone screen? And swipe from screen to screen, with each screen controlling a different room?

The widgets available in Hue and Sharptools do the job fine. Hue in fact allows you to create scenes where different lights are at varying levels and colors in a room - you tap the widget, and the whole scene changes.

[Alwas]

@rontalley you don’t use piston states?

[rontalley]

Not really because I have Tablets mounted in most rooms running ActionTiles/DAKboard. I have played around with them though…

Plus, instead of a bunch of Pistons doing different things for the same device, I typically wrapped them all in one Piston so states and it gets too involved trying to deal with states:

[Alwas]

Oh that’s fine then, I’ll let you off, it just looked a little bare.

[rontalley]

What’s the “Sound Sensor”

[Alwas]

That’s just one of those cheap sound sensors, works good though, but I hear the Arlo Q has the same sound capability exposed to ST which I may have to get one day.