[OBSOLETE] Vacation Light Director

Mode is the trump card. If its outside of the correct mode it will turn off all lights.

Hopefully you will build in an option to use the mode or to NOT use the Mode. I would rather use schedule and within that Mode is an option, just like Sunset/Sunrise (with option to start so many hours before or after these two things). Wish list of course. :smile:

Also, is this App supposed to be sending OFF commands every so many scheduled minutes you have set until the Mode changes?

yep


GREAT app. I was jazzed when I found it as Iā€™ve been wanting this functionality for some time.

Question though ā€“ I was testing it last night for the first time. We were out, so the correct mode was set, and I have one light tied to this app. It turned on right on time, and the ā€˜offā€™ command was sent exactly 27 minutes later, as it should have been. However, in the logs, immediately following the ā€˜offā€™ command, was another ā€˜onā€™ command and sure enough, the light was on when we got home (but turned off upon arrival). Is this the expected behavior with only one light?

I had set the number of active lights to 2, even though there was only one light. Donā€™t know if that helps.

Again, great job.

IDK how this app will work with one light. Iā€™m thinking due to the random logic i have setup that it will almost always select this lightā€¦ not sure it will work right with just one light.

Yeah, I was looking at the code (Iā€™m a dev too). The ā€˜switchesā€™ variable, is that immutable? In other words, when you do this in your runIn method:

def inactive_switches = switches

and then proceed to remove the selected switch from inactive_switches, does that modify ā€˜switchesā€™? My guess is no. And so yeah, based on your logic, it looks like that one switch will always be selected. Which is fine ā€“ just wanted to understand the behavior.

Someone further up asked about adding some degree of randomness. Have you thought about that? If not, I may go ahead and do that. Add an input that allows for some range for randomness. E.g. cycle the lights every 25 minutes +3-8 minutes (so add a random number of minutes between 3 and 8).

youā€™re welcome to make this change if you want. I have no interest in this.

I try to keep me code as lean as possible. Iā€™m a less is more kinda guy.

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I would love to see the options as well. The App that I am missing is (Vacation Ghost) <----- SEE LINK; Iā€™m hoping someone here can put these options into a SmartThings app. This app is a wonderful start.

Iā€™ll fork Timā€™s repo and try to add some options in the next week or so when I have some time.

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Updated to 2.2

Improved the time restriction logic some more.

@brianlees Give this another try. Some more changes to the time restriction logic and someone pushed a change to me that added a category to the app. Apparently this wouldnā€™t work for him without oneā€¦ Maybe thatā€™s the case with you too?

Cool. Iā€™ll try it this weekend!

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I think this works now. I added the code last night and had it set to use the current mode at the time (Night) and set the time a few minutes ahead. The time came and went but nothing happened. I then changed the mode to something else and back again and it then worked. Iā€™ll keep an eye on it and see what happens, but I think it is working now. Very odd. Iā€™m having other issues with my account (support is working on them) and I wonder if I also just have something wrong with my account as a whole. (Ugh, I hope not)

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@tslagle13 - I love this app, but I seem to be running into another issue now. :frowning:

I use this app when my house is set to Away Evening. If we return and the house changes to Home, the timers donā€™t reset. What happens is the app stops turning on new lights (which makes sense because it is set to only work in Away Evening mode), but any lights that it turned on will be turned off after the timer expires for them. So, we were standing in the kitchen tonight and it went completely dark - and the Mrs. kinda groaned under her breath. I won bonus points with the Echo integration earlier this week, so I think we are mostly fine.

Any way to fix this and have the timers cancel when the mode changes? The lights that turned off were part of the Hello Home action that triggered when we arrived. Does that not cancel the timer from this app because another app commanded them to turn on?

Did any of this make sense? Iā€™m a bit tired at the moment.

Iā€™ve been slowly, as time permits, working on the improvements to this app as discussed above so Iā€™ve been toying with these same questions.

I think the short answer would be to use the advanced setting that does not turn off any lights if anyone is home.

This is probably the best way because the app canā€™t have context of what different modes mean nor can it really know what other apps or triggers have set the lights to.

Iā€™m also tired so that may not have made sense!

EDIT: I read the response wrong

Yeah, this is why this setting exists. Basically if there is anyone home the app doesnā€™t take any action ever.

So, if the app turns on some lights while in Away mode and someone comes home and changes the mode to homeā€¦if we put their presence in the app it will not turn the lights off?

Thatā€™s correct :smile:


I have noticed there is no uninstall on this app, and I have one too many. Is there a quick way to enable this to get rid of my extra install of this app? @tslagle13

thanks a lot, works terrific!