It seems as if smartlights and routines are missing some basic rules. I want to have my garage lights turn on when my garage man door opens but “only if” my garage door is closed. There’s no problem having then door turn the lights on and off with my door contact. I just don’t want them to come on If I have my garage open during the day. Mayb I’m missing something. If not is there already a smart app to do this? Thanks
I’m sure @bravenel has some code that can do this, but I don’t think it’s an option in the standard routines.
There are a couple of third-party rules engines that can do it, so you might take a look at those if you’re in the U.S.:
You are right that this sort of thing is missing from all of the built-in apps. The built-in apps are all non-conditional*: turn on if there is motion, period. (The * is that there are conditions available sometimes for time-of-day, days-of-week, and mode.) That’s nice as a basic foundational element, but is lacking for a total solution. I ended up putting in means to disable certain otherwise automatic actions in my apps. But even that is a shortcut, not a true solution. The problem is that there is no conditional circumstance engine upon which rules can be formulated in SmartThings. So, we end up writing case specific code to implement the conditions testing. These apps are quite simple, and perform the function that we might think should be in the platform, but, they work just as well.
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Thx guys. @JDRoberts I tried to use smartrules but I have an older ipod and cannot update to ios8. I gave Joes rule builder a try and it works perfectly. Its amazing how something like this is so essential to HA and very easy to do exactly what you want but has not been implemented by smartthings yet. Hopefully in time a rule builder will be available right from them. Just curious if rules created with Joes builder are executed on his server or the cloud? Thx again for the link.
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