Light Doesn't Stay on After Motion Stops

Hi. I have a simple routine set up for my motion sensor and 2 lights. The problem is while I’m in the room moving around, the light will still turn off after the preset 5 minutes if no motion detected, even though I’m in the room moving around. Also, it does not turn back on right away. It takes a few seconds after the light has turned off, for it to turn back on.

Your “Trigger” is motion but you have time as the trigger. Switch them around having motion first “trigger” and then time as an additional condition.

You don’t get to pick the order. Regardless of what order you input, time always moves to the top. I don’t think there’s any real trigger/condition relationship in the app. Everything is the trigger and condition. When anything in the stack triggers, everything else is evaluated, if it all meets the defined conditions, the action happens - I could be wrong, but that’s how it seems.

I have the same issue as the OP, when using only the non-motion as a trigger. My lights will turn off and not turn back on for a while, regardless of motion. I was using 20 minutes in a small room while getting my furnace replaced recently. Guarantee there was motion in there, but the lights still went off.

I ran into the same issue and was told that the “timer” is a timer and doesn’t get reset (like you think it would). Unless I’m missing something I think smart lighting would work better in this case.

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Maybe I’m wrong, but in this case, the off timer shouldn’t trigger until the trigger timer is true.

The trigger in the example above says no motion for 5 minutes. In my furnace example I set no motion for 20 minutes.

There is also a timer for delaying the actual shutoff which I can see functioning as you describe. But the criteria in the trigger should work.

Smartlighting would obviously work, but for the above should it work and doesn’t is the question!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just trying to offer an option. I’ll move along.

Apparently tone is everything… and you can’t read mine on-screen!

No harm, no foul, no offense.

Literally just wondering if the behaviour is accidental or intentional with how the setup is running. We’re all early adopters here with the new app, so it’s hard to know when a behaviour is intentional, a bug, something half-coded, etc.

The “timer” thing has been this way for a looonnnggg time. It makes no sense to me either but, at this point, I’m guessing it’s intentional or way down the bug list.

FWIW, I try to use SL whenever I can instead of Automations because of the 300 device limit that others have bumped into.

I’m going to continue to watch this thread in case you find a solution. I could move quite a bit off of WebCore if the timer worked like we think it should.

I see. Hmm, this Rule Engine is Boo Boo. :face_vomiting:

SMH

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That’s unfortunate. My first experience with SmartThings and a simple basic motion activated light setup can’t work properly.

Yep. I ran into this problem not long after getting Smartthings. I tried setting two rules, one for when motion starts to turn them on and one when motion stops to turn them off and this still didn’t solve it. I just had to run all my motion based lighting events through smart lighting, that seemed to be the only way to have the lights not turn off on me. I couldn’t get my head around it as to whether the whole issue was a bug or the way it was intended.

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I agree, this is a strange way to set it up. Also, when the timer turns off the lights - if the motion sensor is detecting motion at the time, you’re going to have to wait for however long the sensor takes to reset until it can send a new “motion sensed” message to turn on the lights again.

I was testing w/ a Xiaomi motion sensor that has a 60 second reset when not in Test or Setup mode. Light went off after 5 minutes though I was there and moving, sensor was reporting motion as of 20 seconds, and I couldn’t get the lights to come on again until sensor’s time was up (40 more seconds) and it could report “new motion”.

Smart Lighting it is!

When you guys say “smart lighting”, are you referring to lights that have built in motion sensors already? Or is there other “smart lighting” software/app method to accomplish this?

Hello @RoyEP3,

In the new app, click on the hamburger in upper left, click on SmartApps, then click on Smart Lighting - it’s another way to set up lighting automations. I use it a lot. Note I just found it has a bug - when you get to the end it asks you if you want to rename it - if you try to do it it removes all your previous selections! Just save it with the name given and then edit to rename as you want.

It’s easy to follow!

Best,
Alec

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Like I said, I’m new to SmartThings, so this is really helpful. So this method will work with motion lights as intended?

Now having discovered Smart Lighting, what reason would I want to continue using regular lighting automations in SmartThings?

I’m only a couple of months into smartthings and luckily I only made a couple of custom lighting automations before I discovered the ‘Smart Lighting’ app. It took me a while to find it as well because I started with the new app and it just wasn’t in there until I installed the old app and added it then it came up in the new app. The actual automation section I would say is there for anything that doesn’t involve your lighting, at least that’s the conclusion i’ve come to.

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I use basic Automations when I can as they’re a bit simpler if you want something really simple - fewer clicks. I actually wish the app’s UI would list all the automations including SmartLighting in one list, with a little icon or something to show if it is a smartapp. It’s a bit of a hassle having to navigate to separate lists if you can’t remember exactly where you made that automation you want to edit or check.

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