I’d like to make a feature request for ST Light Switches.
I have a number of security “switches” set up (or rather, scenarios, as the term “Switch” is overloaded here). It would be good to have a disable switch to turn them off when not needed.
Two areas where this would be immensely helpful:
Backyard security: We had a couple of days of very high wind, and all my motion detectors outside were constantly going off and keeping the perimeter security flood lights on continuously last night.
Traveling: While out of town over the holidays, I had a number of lights programmed to come up at various times. This scenario would be repeated whenever we go out of town, but since we use the lights when home, we don’t want the scenario to play out when we are not traveling.
Both cases require me to delete the scenarios, which is especially annoying for the security lights, as I actually want that scenario all the time to be active- just want to be able to deactivate it during bad weather. I had no choice but to completely delete the switches to stop it. Given that I have 3 motion detectors controlling 4 switches (and there is a bug in ST when I try to apply many motion triggers to may switches- see another post I made), it is a lot of work to re-set it up later.
I know that for the traveling scenario where main area lights are turned on programatically, I could use presence, but I have read that it is sort of dodgy whether presence works reliably, and in any event, it would be a pain to use it the way we have used it, and even my wife frequently leaves her phone at home, so using it for presence isn’t really reliable, anyway. A simple enable/disable on scenarios/recipes/switches- whatever you want to call it, would be really useful.
I think you could accomplish this with 2 new modes. A vacation mode for when you’re traveling, and a bad weather (temp disable) mode for the backyard issue. Then you can restrict the various motion triggered actions from operating during those modes. One mode change and you’re all set vs disabling multiple switches.
Thanks, but can I have multiple modes set at the same time? I already use mode set by Sunrise/Sunset to mark after dark and daytime. These modes control exterior landscape lighting and restrict the outdoor motion detectors actions on flood lights to nighttime only. If I set Vacation or Bad Weather mode, I presume that will get overwritten on the next regularly scheduled mode change.
States would be helpful, rather than mutually exclusive modes (presuming they cannot be overlaid).
Modes are mutually exclusive… but what happens in the modes is not.
For example, you could have night mode where:
Landscape lights turn on until midnight
Motion sensors turn on floodlights,
Front porch light is on until 10:00pm
And then you can have Bad weather night mode where:
Landscape lights turn on until midnight
Front porch light is on until 10:00pm
Obviously this requires setting up most “night” things to run in both Night and BadWeatherNight modes, but it can be done relatively easily.
As for the Vacation mode, many automated mode changes can be set to not change if you are in a specific mode. For example, my home changes to “home” mode at 6:00am automatically unless my current mode is “away.” Then it doesn’t change. Depending on what method you are using to change between night/day, it should be relatively easy to say Don’t Change Mode if the current mode is Vacation (or away or whatever you want to call it).
Thanks, Chris. I’ll give that a try- can I trigger the Sun Calculator to also include a mode check? I see a Set for Specific Mode, but that isn’t exactly intuitive- I don’t know what that means. I’ll have to try it out, but I really wish things were intuitively labeled (I know the Sun Calculator was done by someone else).