Presence control for lighting not working

I’ve got a SmartApp for turning on my outdoor lights when my phone (and therefore me) is not present in the house. It’s part of a bunch of apps I have controlling the outdoor lights. The other two apps are lights on and off at a certain time and lights on on motion detected.

The other two apps work fine but if the outdoor lights go out AND my phone is not present then they do NOT come back on. Reading through the forums I suspect this is because there is no Presence trigger occurring for the ST hub to detect. This is the scenario… outdoor lights come on a sunset. An hour after sunset I leave for dinner. 9:30p rolls around and the lights automatically go out. I am still out of the house. I thought that the Presence should turn the lights back on till the phone returns but this isn’t happening. I suspect it is because there is no trigger saying I’ve left since I left long before the Presence app is supposed to take effect.

  1. Does this sound like a logical explanation for why it is not working?
  2. Is there a way around this? I’d like to not have to open the app and turn the lights back on manually after they go out at their pre-determined time.

Thanks.

Mick

@mlasky1970, @JDRoberts,

Hi Mickey. I believe your assumption in number 1) is correct as the presence trigger will fire as you leave and if the light is already on nothing else will happen.

As for 2) you might need to use Core. I have notified JD Roberts to see if he can help you.

Correct: presence is only evaluated as a trigger when the device crosses the threshold of the detection area. So what you need is a “do while” option, and that’s not available in the official features.

Fortunately, there is a community-created smart app, core, which can do stacked conditionals of this type. The following thread should get you started (this is a clickable link)