I’m new here and I’m looking for a way to turn on my lights when the system is disarmed but only from being armed (away). If armed (stay) to disarmed I would like the lights to remain off. I tried a virtual switch that turned on when armed (away) and off when disarmed. Thinking that it would only turn off when it was going from armed (away) to disarmed because it wouldn’t even be on to turn off it on armed (stay). But the if statements in smart things doesn’t work like that. Even if a device is already off when a command tries to turn off the device it will still trigger the action. Please help im driving myself crazy. I also have and use IFTTT if that helps. Thanks
I am not going to offer any immediate suggestions because I fear we may have a fundamentally different approach. There is more than one way to do it and I might not have thought too much about your way.
You seem to be placing SmartThings Home Monitor (STHM) up front and centre in your thinking. In Automation terms that might equate to the STHM Status (Security Mode) appearing in the conditions a lot, and less so in the actions unless you intend to set it automatically as well as manually. So if you arm or disarm STHM you want that to be the reason for something to happen. I may be misunderstanding you though.
My approach is rather the opposite. I don’t really want to use the STHM Status in any conditions. The most I want to happen when it is armed or disarmed is to be told about it, and perhaps set a physical or virtual indication. I actually set the STHM Status based on changes to the Location Modes, which I automate, but I can freely change it manually if I want to.
Location Modes might prove useful to effectively give you a ‘previous status’.
I think I know what you’re trying to do, but it might not be possible with ST’s automations (I haven’t messed with it enough). However, I have something similar that I do in WebCoRE. The piston will turn on lights if it’s in armed away and a door to the house opens. If you’re willing to go down the WebCoRE trail, I know it can be done there.
I’m thinking that the Virtual Switch should work. I’m curious, why are you using the Virtual Switch’s Off condition as a trigger?
If
Geolocation is Away
Then
Set STHM Armed Away
Turn On Virtual Switch Away
If
Geolocation is Home
Then
Disarm STHM
If
STHM Disarm
(and)
Virtual Switch Away is On
Then
Turn on lights
Turn Off Virtual Switch Away
If
STHM Disarm
Then
Do the other standard stuff when turning off STHM from both Armed Away and Armed Stay.
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Another possibility is to use that virtual switch in the Smart Lighting Smartapp.