Is there a way to nest routines so as to gather pre-existing automatic routines (such as turning on lights at certain times) into one ‘master routine’? This would make it much simpler to activate them all in one action. There does not seem to be a way to make ‘Away’ do this, for example.
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You have to use Virtual switches to achieve this.
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How do you do that? I can’t believe it would be complicated - well it shouldn’t be!!
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Can you provide a example of what do you want to achieve exactly?
You can create manually run routines and call them from other routines.
You can also use virtual switches as triggers or (pre)conditions in routines. For instance, the classic “guest mode” switch to enable or disable certain automations when you have guests.
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You can nest manual routines into automations (e.g. “All Blinds Up at Sunrise”).
So if you have an “All Blinds Up” manual, you can nest that into “All Blinds Up at Sunrise” automation. “Exterior Lights on full bright” nests into “exterior lights on when I return home”. Etc.
No that’s not it. I have automatic (as in timed start) routines e.g. ‘turn on lights 1 at 19:00’ and so on. I have to (manually) activate these automatic routines on days when I want the lights on at 19:00, and then they do this every day until I de-activate that routine. And there are other similar routines to other things. I am asking how to create a new (manually activated) routine called say ‘All lights on auto’ which then activates all the others as a set - without me having to go to each one in turn. This should be basic stuff, but when I create a new routine, the option to call other routines in the ‘THEN’ part of the logic - is greyed out!
… I should add that the ‘sub-routines’ I have created may all start at different times, so it’s not as simple as invoking all lights, blinds etc to go on at the same one time…
When you say “activate” you don’t mean run them at the moment but just that they run when they’re scheduled.
That’s what the virtual switch is useful for. Create a virtual switch from the app if available or from the advanced website and use it as a condition (precondition to be precise) for all the schedules. If the switch is on the schedules will run, if it’s off they won’t run. If you want your auto routines to run set the switch to on, if you don’t, set it to off.
Virtual switches are so useful when you get used to them. Like the aforementioned guest mode or even integrating devices from Google Home or Alexa that are not compatible with SmartThings.
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Thanks, that explains a lot. Where can I access the advanced website, please, as the app (on iOS) won’t allow me to create virtual switch…
There you go NEW Advanced User App for SmartThings Web!
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