[Migrated to Custom Capabilities] Rooms Manager: Smarter Rooms: Personalized rules based home automation with rooms Occupancy sensing from devices you already have in your home

SmartApps & Automations Community Created SmartApps
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Rooms Occupancy and Rooms Manager

While ST has a concept of rooms it is essentially a grouping mechanism which does not enable personalized automation. In contrast rooms occupancy considers the room as a meta device and automates common tasks associated with a “room” physical or virtual. What makes it really useful is not just the room's occupancy state but the ability to manage automation for rooms in a set of rules for the room based on the occupancy state of the room and data from various sensors. When creating a room device through the smartapp you are able to create these rules for the rooms making your rooms really smart.

What these rules enable is many common tasks around rooms which most users go through automating at some point. Usually through setting up a few rules or creating a few pistons. I have been there and done that myself. While those work to a degree, it does not enable the kind of comprehensive automation that should be possible for devices in a room based on sensor and device inputs. This smartapp makes that possible.

If there is one principle that these apps are built on, it is - that your home automation should work in the background in a repeatable and predictable manner without requiring periodic human intervention. In short - your automation should work for you and not the other way around. But even more importantly perhaps, this app gets you the kind of WAF for your home automation that you have always dreamed about. 🙂

You can continue reading here for the summarized version or read the more detailed and always the latest version on Github which also describes the individual settings:

Rooms Manager and Rooms Occupancy readme on Github

Additionally, these room devices also have attributes, capabilities and commands which are useable in webCoRE or other smartapps like Smart Lighting in ST or Rule Machine in Hubitat. There is a range of other automations that webCoRE makes possible that could not otherwise be done without writing a custom smartapp for it. I use webCoRE for that and am I big fan of Adrian. So checkout webCoRE as well if you don't already use it.

How does this app work?

This app works by setting rooms occupancy to various states based on a set of sensors as specified by the user. It takes this state and attribute values from various sensors and evaluates a set of rules that you create to match the conditions. When all of the conditions for the rule matches, it executes actions specified on these matching rules.

As an example, you can specify motion sensors in Occupied settings to set a room state to Occupied when there is motion from any of those motion sensors. Then create a rule to turn on some lights. In this rule you could also set that these lights should only be turned on if a lux sensor is at a certain lux value or lower. Or you could specify that only turn on the lights during certain times. Or you could specify turn on the lights at a certain level during certain times and at another level during other times.

As a part of the Occupied settings you can also specify timeout values so the room does not indefinitely stay set to Occupied state and the lights turn off after a while when there is no motion. How quickly that happens is controlled by you through the timeout value you specify in the settings. By specifying settings in the Checking settings you are also able to dim the lights before the lights turn off completely so there is a visual cue to the room occupant that the lights will turn off because they have not moved in a while.

Off course you may be in the room while and not be moving for a while like reading a book or watching TV. That's when you use the Engaged settings to set the room to Engaged state. See below for additional details.

Here are the common room occupancy states:

  • Occupied:

    • Occupied is you go to a room are in there for a few minutes then leave the room. Lights come on when you enter the room and turn off after a couple of minutes of your leaving the room. Think of Occupied as a transient state and Engaged below as a somewhat persistent state.

  • Engaged:

    • Engaged is when you stay in a room for an extended period of time and may be motionless for some or all of the time. since we cant depend on the motion event for engaged state there are different options to set the room to engaged for extended occupancy. these are all under engaged settings and there is more coming. but these help make sure the switches you set to on stay on even if there is no motion in the room. When in Engaged state you have a different and longer timeout state than the Occupied state. So there is still a motion requirement but a much higher time threshold than the Occupied state.

  • Asleep:

    • Asleep state is meant for use while the room should be 'asleep' as in not respond to most typical automation like motion automation. But it does allow for other automation like using a night light and using a button to turn on or off the night lights. You are still able to create rules for the Asleep state but it additionally support a little bit for Asleep state specific automation in the Asleep settings.

  • Vacant:

    • Vacant state is for when the room is vacant and you want everything to get turned off. It is possible to setup rules for Vacant settings as well but not required.

  • Checking:

    • Checking state is used for transition between states and not user controlled. For example, when moving from Occupied to Vacant occupancy state the room will transition to Checking state. While the app does not allow creating rules for checking state there is some settings available to control dimming of the lights when in Checking state.

  • Locked:

    • Locked state disables all automations for the room and allows you to control lights and other devices in the room either manually or some other way.

The states 'locked', 'reserved', 'kaput' and 'donotdisturb' are effectively all similar in that they all disable automation. That being the case there is some sensors allowed to set / unset rooms to / from Locked state but no other automation beyond that for these occupancy states. Here is a quick description of the various top level settings and how the app works. At the heart of the app is the concept of room states and rules to automate devices based on these room's states and other sensor inputs. (In the following description when I talk about sensors it refers to devices that have attributes which are used to drive decisions in the room's rules.)

Note many of these settings are optional but when specified will require other settings to be specified. Like specifying a motion sensor is optional. But if you do specify a motion sensor the motion event to trigger timeout countdown becomes required.

Top level settings:

  • Room Devices

    • Room sensors used in checking rule conditions based occupancy state and data from these sensors.

The next 6 settings group are for how the room is set to each of those 6 occupancy states and settings specific to that occupancy state.

  • Occupied Settings

    • Settings that specify how this occupancy state is set. Normally it is based on motion but there are also other ways of detecting Occupied state like a specific switch turning on. Available settings:

  • Engaged Settings

    • Settings that specify how this occupancy state is set. Normally it is based on motion but there are also other ways of detecting Engaged state like a button being pressed.

  • Vacant Settings

    • Settings that specify how this occupancy state is set. Normally it is based on motion but there are also other ways of detecting Occupied state like a specific switch turning off.

  • Asleep Settings

    • Settings that specify how this occupancy state is set. Asleep is tricky because there is no true commonly used physical asleep sensors. So, these settings allow other ways of setting Asleep occupancy state and specifying night light settings which are a little different from how lights work through the rules.

    • Night lights:

      Settings for night lights with motion while in Asleep state.

  • Locked Settings

    • Settings that specify how this occupancy state is set. This state disables all automation for the room.

These group of settings allow for light routine settings used in the rules.

  • Auto Level 'AL' Settings

    • Settings to specify auto level and color temperature settings for the room which allows using 'AL' as a light level rule to automatically calculate and use these values based on time of day, wake and sleep time specified.

  • Holiday Lights 'HL' Settings

    • Settings to specify holiday light patterns for use in rules during various holiday seasons. Allows for rotating colors through or slow twinkling any set of lights specified in the rules.

Temperature settings is their own group.

  • Temperature Settings

    • Manage temperature settings for the room in conjunction with thermostat or switch controlled room AC and/or heater. After adding temperature settings remember create temperature rules in maintain rules so the app can automate temperature control based on these rules.

Here are the rest of the settings starting with the heart of the app - Maintain Rules, which allows you to maintain automation rules for the room and turn them in to smart rooms.

  • Maintain Rules

    • Here's where to create the rules that check room occupancy state, various sensor values and other variables to decide which lights and switches should be turned on or off. It also allows executing a piston or routine or even starting and stopping a music player based on the rules.

    While date acts a filter when checking rules for match, time works as a trigger. So, if you wanted your outdoor lights to turn on and off at certain times everyday you would create 1 rule with those times and lights to turn on and off at right times. You could also use this feature in combination with date filtering and with or without Holiday Light 'HL' settings above for different color settings for different holidays.

  • Adjacent Room Settings

    • Adjacent rooms allow specifying which rooms are adjacent to that room so you can automatically turn on lights in the next room when moving through this room.

  • Mode and Other Settings

    • Miscellaneous settings that don't fit any where else, like in which modes should all automation be disabled or what icon to use for the room in the rooms manager and a few other settings.

  • View All Settings

    • What the name says.

This only describes a part of what's possible through this app. For more details please see each group of settings for a room in the wiki here:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Rooms_Occupancy

For a github install from repo in ST use : owner: adey / name: bangali / branch: master. Install and publish the rooms occupancy DTH then install and publish the rooms manager and rooms child app smartapps.

For a manual install here are the links, in order of DTHs and smartapps you should save and publish.

rooms occupancy DTH:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adey/bangali/master/devicetypes/bangali/rooms-occupancy.src/rooms-occupancy.groovy

rooms manager smartapp:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adey/bangali/master/smartapps/bangali/rooms-manager.src/rooms-manager.groovy

rooms child smartapp:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adey/bangali/master/smartapps/bangali/rooms-child-app.src/rooms-child-app.groovy

Then go to ST app -> Automation tab -> Add a Smartapp -> My apps in ST app and install rooms manager app then create your rooms within rooms manager.

When creating a room first give the room a name and save the room then go back in to the room to add various settings to the room. This is because the app uses app state to manage the rules and in ST the app state is not consistent till the app has been saved once.

Like the rooms app and want to contribute? Here are some options:

  • Like this post to help other users find this app
  • Submit a feature request on this thread or by creating an issue on Github
  • Submit a bug for something that is not working quite right here or on Github
  • Donate to support development of the app: donate here.

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20 Likes
3

update from repo is now fixed.

1 Like
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How do you get the device status in webCoRe?

If i would want to get the temperature of a room i would use [My Room:temperature]. If i would want to find out if the room is vacant occupied, how would i do it? Tried ‘status’ but nothing was showing.

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I like this. Nice job! I’m going to get it installed and see what I can do with it. I’m thinking some integration with EchoSistant feedback would be awesome.

1 Like
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heres a wC example:

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and log:

Logs
10/22/2017, 10:55:32 PM +319ms
+259ms	║occupied
10/22/2017, 10:55:25 PM +690ms
+209ms	║checking
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thank you. cool! whatever i can do to help, happy to. just let me know.

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Nice way to apply it :slight_smile: but is there a simpler way. I was hoping to use this to replace some occupancy tiles on my dashboard. At the moment, i’m writing and reading from global variables. This would make things much more better. What i’m trying to achieve is…if room occupied, show icon x with color y.

Any ideas on how i can do that?

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something like this?

set piston tile #1 title to “Room Nursery” text to “([Room Nursery : roomOccupancy] == ‘occupied’ ? ‘:fa-user:’ : ‘:fa-circle-o-notch:’)” footer to “Occupancy”, and colors to “([Room Nursery : roomOccupancy] == ‘occupied’ ? ‘Blue’ : ‘Red’)” over Daylight White

1 Like
10

Awesome!! Thanks. I couldn’t find roomOccupancy in the list and wasn’t sure what i should use.

But this is great…i can finally stop using those global variables and make a lot of my pistons more effective.

11

you are welcome. got it. you should find it there now:

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12

Many thanks for this. I have installed the app/DTH, and I am not able to find any setting where the lights in the room should be only turned OFF based on the time (i.e., only turn on lights when room occupied after 5pm). How do I enable this?

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13

you are welcome. excellent feature suggestion. i will add that in.

there will need to be 2 times so its between 2 times and not just after a time?

14

I’ve cooked up my own Piston for this type of automation but sometimes it doesn’t work correctly despite me knowing that I created the Piston correctly. I also took it a step further to say if the switch is turned on/off physically then…

I think I am going to give this a try as the occupied will be great for HVAC settings as well.

Thanks for your effort!

1 Like
15

Yes, you are right - two times please.

1 Like
16

ok, will do. thanks.

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pushed 0.03 BETA to github with the following changes:

*   1) added new states do not disturb and asleep, on user demand. these have button value of 7 and 8 respectively.
*	2) locked and kaput moved below the fold and replaced on-screen with do not disturb and asleep respectively.
*   3) cleaned up settings display.
*   4) changed roomOccupancy to occupancyStatus. sorry for the compatibility breaking change. by user demand.
*   5) updated some interstitial text.
*   6) if no motion sensor specified but there is a timeout value >= 5 and turn off switches specified, those
*            switches will be switched off after timeout seconds if room is vacant.
*	7) added new engaged state, on user demand. this button has a button value of 9 respectively.
*   8) if room state changes any pending actions are cancelled.
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@bangali @baz2473 Hi, I’ve ran into a few issues and hopefully you can point me in the right direction.

I installed the initial DTH and used the sample WebCore pistons https://community.webcore.co/t/occupied-room-detection-with-smartapp-custom-dth-useful-for-keeping-lights-on-if-a-room-is-occupied-motionless/505 (as per the old instructions)

I was using the ones that changed occupancy state and not the lights. These seemed to work (as I was testing to get a better understanding of the configuration). However since I updated to the latest DTH they no longer work.

I’ve looked through this forum and the webcore forum but I don’t see anyone else experiencing this issue, so not sure if its something I have done or that with the new DTH the old pistons are no longer valid.

Can you assist?

Cheers

19

is it possible that this is causing the issue? could you post snapshots of the piston?

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@Baz2473 @bangali Thanks for both coming back to me. @Baz2473 no trouble at all, I figured there was something that I needed to do :slight_smile:, I just didn’t know what.

I think this concept is great and the app is brilliant, i’m just still testing my options as i have multiple sensors in rooms due to weird angles etc. and I know you had said 1 sensor per room is key :slight_smile:

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It doesn’t matter how many sensors in the room. I was just saying how it could be done with only 1 Sensor in the Room minimum. Just add each sensor for the room in the variable at the top. Should still work fine as long as you make sure that they are selected as “any” in each statement for turning on/Occupied
And “all” for the inactive Off/Vacant command. :grinning:

1 Like