Motion sensor turns light on/off under certain conditions?

[Paybax (Ryan Little)]

Hello,

When my Arlo cam detects motion it turns on my outdoor lights and then turns them off after 15 minutes. My issue is I am having a party soon and want the lights to stay on but when Arlo senses motion it will turn the lights off after 15 minutes.

Any solution to this that can be done with stock ST? I know I could temporarily change my rules but would like the lights to stay on if they were on before motion was detected.

Thanks

[JDRoberts]

What did you use to set up your current rule that turns the lights off again after 15 minutes?

Usually the fastest easiest way to do this kind of thing with the standard features is just to have a mode called “party mode” and have your other rule not run in party mode.

But it depends on exactly how you have it set up now.

[Paybax (Ryan Little)]

I did it with “automate Lights and switches”. Ya good idea I might just create a mode for it.

Ideally the rule would say if light is already on that the rule wouldn’t shut the light off.

[JDRoberts]

@Paybax

I did it with “automate Lights and switches”. Ya good idea I might just create a mode for it.

Ideally the rule would say if light is already on that the rule wouldn’t shut the light off.

There is a way to do that with custom code, but you would need to start from the beginning and rebuild your existing rules so that they are wrapped in the logic to not turn the light off under certain circumstances.

So it can definitely be done, it’s just a lot more complicated than just using the mode and changing the mode manually when you want to ignore the existing rule.

Core is a very sophisticated community – created rules engine. So you could look into that. But I think it would be overkill for this situation.

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…

[rontalley]

I had to use CoRE for a situation similar to this. The logic was a little confusing to me but once I did a little reading on the CoRE Wiki, I understood the various pistons and am now able to write an automation for pretty much anything I can think of in just a matter of minutes.

The Piston that you want to use is Latching and head over to the CoRE help thread for assistance. The people there are very quick to respond and once you start using and understanding CoRE then you will dream up of all kinds of cool things to do with SmartThings!

Hey!, Did you you know that Harmony can control SmartThings?! So darn cool!