New here... question about automation and specifically sunset to off time and location programming

SmartApps & Automations
1

Hi everyone. farily new to all this but I got almost everything working. using the ST hub v3 and I already had Lutron caseta dimmers throughout, so I got the lutron bridge and everything works great and joined nicely!

on to automation, got them all set but noticed 2 things missing…

  1. cannot set to on sunset and off at a specific time. Unless I’m missing something, is there a way to do this or only on/off at specific time or on/off sunset to sunrise? I like for lights to come on at sunset and off at say 12:00am or a set time, not stay on all night…
    This leads to next question…
  2. how do you set the location for so it knows local sunset? I cannot find that anywhere in the app.
    I’m using the new app and I do see where it finds your location based on if you’re phone is home but I don’t want sunset determined based on where my phone location is… how do you set the location of where the hub is for sunset times ?

thanks in advance. everything is fairly easy to use and automations are great so far, what a convenience. I’m sorry if this topic has been addressed already, I’ll search again but didn’t see this exact topic.

2
  • Tap on the Devices tab
  • Tap the Location drop-down menu at the top of the screen (in the center)
  • Make sure your Location is selected and not All Devices
  • Click on the three dots in the upper right of the screen and select Edit
  • You should see the field for geolocation
3

For the automation question, your observation is correct. Create two smart lighting automations. One for turning on at sunset and another for off at a specific time.

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4

perfect, duh… LOL… and thanks.

too bad they require separate entries/events… just double the line items, but it is the solution.

and I assume the +/- for sunset means time before or after sunset? so if I want them on 10 minutes before sunset I would enter a “-10”?

Thanks again!

5

Yup, that’s how the offset works. Enjoy!

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6

thanks. for some reason it did not work… perhaps because that trigger was already set at a time and was on… I’ll try again tomorrow.

one more question, I have all my “dimmers” on one automation and set to come on a dim to a level, can I also add my 2 lamps to that automation even though they only come one and off no dim? It did give those as options to add but I wasn’t sure if it would be a problem if it tried to “dim” the on/off lamp or does it somehow know and just turn that one on and dim the dimmers?

7

Make sure you set your location like @jkp outlined above. You can double check it is correct by logging in to https://account.smartthings.com

You should be able to add normal on/off switches to an automation with dimmers.

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