Seasonally disable smart lighting automation?

I did a search for “disable smart lighting automation” and came up with a few posts that didn’t really seem simple enough for me.

What I want to do is disable certain automations for long periods. Specific example - a lamp that comes on in the morning at 6:10am does not need to come on during the summer because it’s already light. I can’t use a mode, because I cannot be in two modes at once (for example, “away” and “summer”).

There is no disable feature on Smart Lighting. Rule Machine supports it but it no longer supports SmartThings (do I have that right?), and anyway I don’t do iOS.

I could edit the automation twice a year and make it so that it turns on and off a “virtual” switch (but I have found no description of how to easily create a virtual switch).

Can anyone suggest an easy way to do this? Worst case I will just delete the automation at the start of summer.

BTW you probably notice I keep stressing “easy”. I spent many years programming, and I still write bash scripts for a living. I want this to be a tool, not a hobby (I know …).

Thanks … Mike

The easiest way I can think of would be to use season based modes ( so for summer you have away, home etc, same for winter) but this creates a lot of modes. Otherwise something like smartrules would be needed and so far there isn’t an android equivalent. Also I am not 100% sure if smartrules has a seasonal option.

I’ve resorted to simply creating seasonal modes.

2 Likes

I just tie these situations to a LUX sensor. Almost all of my lighting is run on a couple of modes, Home, Evening, Night but are also dependant on the LUX value. If it’s bright out in the morning when summer approaches the lights just fail the logic test, i.e. LUX > 500 and Motion and Mode = x.
I also tie some lights to Sunset - 60 so as sunset approaches and moves with the season the light vary accordingly.

1 Like

I’ve got my evening lights tied to sunset, but the morning lights are not tied to sunrise (they would have to be set for “at sunrise-30 but not before 6:10am” or somesuch, and I’m not sure if Smart Lighting supports that logic.

I do like the idea of tying it to a lux sensor, as the brightness can vary significantly depending on whether it is cloudy or sunny out.

I could also double all my modes as suggested.

Or I could siply turn the switch back off as I first walk by it in the morning and realize it’s not needed. But that’s the least elegant solution :grin:

1 Like

The following covers how to create a virtual switch. Basically you just have to pick from a few multiple-choice options in the SmartThings web interface. It’s not super easy, but if you have any device with a web browser, it’s not bad.

Thanks very much JDRoberts, I’ll check it out.

Mike

1 Like

I have not yet had a chance to attempt to create a virtual switch, but I appear to have solved my problem.

I have two similar automations that I wanted to disable - one was to turn on the ‘hutch’ lamp at 6:10am every weekday morning, and the other was to turn on the same lamp at 8:00am every weekend morning.

I noticed the weekday automation wasn’t working (i.e. was behaving as desired for this time of the year). I checked its configuration, and there was no device listed. Sweet!

I went into the configuration of the (still working as not desired) weekend automation, deselected the lamp, hit next (it whined at me about missing information). I then used the phone’s back-arrow to go backwards, and then hit Done at the top right which successfully saved the settings.

I suspect I tried the same steps for the weekday automation, and when it complained I assumed it refused to change the configuration, whereas in fact it did change the configuration to exactly what I wanted.

Bug or feature? :grin: Either way I got what I wanted. For now.

Mike