[DEPRECATED] Trigger Happy!

Aaah right, I blanked on that as an option, thanks. :smiley:

I cant seem to get triggers to work. I want at least one that when i arrive presence sees its me or sees its my wife (we both have our cells and presence fabs) and disarms the door and unlocks it (i have schlage camelot lock and a multi sensor on the door). To take it a step further id like it to turn on a certain light if its past 6pm for 5 minutes upon arrival as well… Thoughts? Ive tried several ways

Perhaps you should go try Rule Machine instead. While Trigger Happy should work, it’s no longer being developed. You can do this with Rule Machine.

For your case, you would select you and your wife’s presence sensors as the trigger, and then select the actions you want to happen. Those actions would happen when either of you arrive.

For the light after 6 pm you would need a second trigger, with the same triggers. But for this one you would use a time restriction available under More Options at the bottom of the main page. Your actions would be a) turn on the light, and b) turn it off after 5 minutes.

In both cases simply omit Conditions (an optional selection on the main page).

Bruce when you said add a second trigger with the same triggers… You are saying go back into the unlock on arrival and add a 2nd trigger there to turn lights on for a few minutes if its past sunset upon arrival as well or create a seperate named trigger for that?

No, I meant to create a whole second rule (trigger). It takes two to do what you want. It’s just that they both have the same trigger events – different actions for each.

Hi Bruce, when I try to delete Trigger Happy in the IDE, I get an error message that says “This SmartApp can’t be deleted at this time because it is installed by one or more users.” I was able to delete Trigger. I’m planning to install the new version of Rule Machine w/ triggers, so if I can’t totally get rid of Trigger Happy it’s not that big a deal. Thanks so much for creating these much needed apps, it makes a huge difference for those of us that are unable to code our own smartapps!

Hi Bruce,
First off, thank you! This and your rule engine are amazing!

My question is the following. If I have something like the GE In-Wall outlet and have one of the two receptacles controlled by a (dumb) light switch, can the state of the controlled receptacle act as a trigger in your program?

Unfortunately my light switch does not have a neutral wire, so I cannot install a smart light switch on the wall and am limited to installing an in-wall electrical outlet. I would like to use this action to control other smart bulbs in the same room (but not wired together) by this dumb light switch.

Thanks!
Scott

If it presents itself as a switch in ST, then yes it can. You can trigger from either on or off.

This argument to combine the two apps seems to keep coming up. I believe that the difficulty (at least for me) is the understanding of what might be better on the other app. The example above where the user needed to test for a door opening and closing and another testing for power use were hugely valuable to me in understanding the difference between the two.

The idea that there are logical differences in how things operate make perfect sense once the logic is made apparent, but the truth is that it takes a bit for us non-programmers to get there. If you do ever consider combining these two apps, couldn’t you just start with a question or two that will determine whether the thing the user wants to do is a rule or a trigger?

In other words, combine the user side of the two apps, but on the back end keep them doing exactly what they currently do. That way no one would need ask what is the difference because the initial question(s) just jump to the screen we currently get. Maybe we would have to install a new front end, plus two child apps to make it all work? It would be beautiful though.

edit- I thought I had read far enough down, but now I see that my initial confusion was just a few posts away. I had been playing with Rule Machine and I had been wondering what the difference really was because it seemed I could do triggers in there. Obviously it all makes more sense when you actually read to the end. Sorry.

They were merged some time ago. Trigger Happy is now obsolete. Check out the updated documentation for Rule Machine.

Also, check out this explanation of triggers, rules and “conditioned triggers”:

what are these acronyms AFA and SRB?

Nail on the head!!! Kudo’s to the work you have done. Thanks! ST has created so many isolated attempts at oversimplifying their entire device control paradigm, and now they have a giant stack of narrowly focused apps (hidden in device specific categories or cross device like descriptions) that control specific types of interactions, and are not flexible enough to allow for the cross device uses at all. For example (your presence + motion + on lights + on music + on heater + Alarm off) are a mish mash of apps+devices, that when stitched together, largely do not work to automate this sequence of needs. It is as if they can not see how effective services like IFTTT or Zapier, (Trigger Happy and Rule Machine too) have been at solving these kinds of variable outcome, rules/trigger based problems.

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So Trigger Happy is obsoleted by Rule Machine as it exists now. Check it out:

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@bravenel any chance of seeing trigger happy as an alternative to rule machine since it’s more basic it may be more reliable.

He’s not on the forums currently…

:tired_face: :no_mouth:

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Out in a ‘business’ (ad) venture…:slight_smile:

Probably hired by SmartThings competitor.:slight_smile:

Hired? Neh…more than that… probably

Coming out with his own hub? Will we see it on kickstarter?