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it’s definitely possible on the smartthings platform, this is a very common use case, and there are a number of different ways to do it. I’m going to leave that discussion to other people for now.
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The hue remote dimmers are not going to work for this purpose because they don’t integrate well with smartthings. In order to have this kind of complexity in your rules management, you do need devices which have strong integration.
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regarding budget, for most implementations smart switches with dumb bulbs will be less expensive than smart switches with smart bulbs. And you are going to need smart switches to be able to do the override function.
At this point there are typically two reasons why someone might want smart bulbs:
A) They want some of the special effects features that the smart bulbs can do, like changing colours or changing colour temperatures.
B) they have multiple bulbs are controlled by one switch that they want to divide into zones without having to do any rewiring. This is most common in a large room which has now been set up as a home theater, or in the kitchen where you may want different kinds of lighting in different work areas.
But if these are just regular ceiling fittings and you want to control when they turn on and off rather than the features of the bulb itself, a smart switch with dumb bulbs is normally less expensive.
- although it will add something to costs, I would recommend a motion sensor rather than just a timer for turning lights off again. Otherwise it’s almost inevitable that the lights will turn off when someone is still standing in the area.
It’s true that your long press idea would work for preplanned activities, but sometimes things just happen. Someone walking out of a room drops a tray full of dishes or a box of small objects and starts cleaning them up. It’s unlikely they’ll remember to run over to the switch and long press it first. So just another option to consider. This can be combined with the long press as an override, that’s not an issue. But I think if you rely only on the long press you’re going to find family satisfaction with the automations goes down.
