Smart lighting routine to turn off dimmer without sending switch pressed event?

SmartApps & Automations Automation Ideas
1

Good evening all,
I have just installed an inovelli dimmer (non-scene) on my stairs and have an iris motion detector triggering the lights on and off.

I created an additional SL routine thinking that I could use the event of pressing the off paddle of the physical switch to trigger turning off all the downstairs lights (the stairs dimmer is at the top of the stairs), however when my motion detection routine turns the light off after 2 mins, it triggers the all downstairs lights off routine which I’ve now had to remove.

I though the motion detection routine wouldn’t cause the dimmer to send a switch pressed event.

Is there anyway around this?

TIA,
Jon.

2

Unless something has changed since I last looked, SmartLighting triggers off the status of the Switch being turned off, not how it was turned off.

There are some smartapps that attempt to distinguish between physical and digital events, but they tend not to be reliable as if the message passes through a repeater, it will no longer be reported as a physical event.

So to get the effect that you want you would need to get one of the devices that does report scene requests, using central scene commands. That would include the newest GE zwave switches, the Homeseer switches, the Inovelli with scene reporting, etc. These devices work differently because they send a code to the hub based on the tap pattern on the switch, allowing for double tap or in some cases even triple tap. So you can use a single tap for one light, a double tap for all downstairs lights, or whatever.

But for the regular switches, in most cases SmartThings Will only be looking for the “switch is now off” condition as the trigger for other automations.

1 Like
3

Hi JD,
Thanks for the prompt and detailed reply. Luckily I still have a couple more switches to buy, so I can buy a scene enabled one next time around and swap this one to a room where I only need basic control. This is the only place in the house I can see me needing this functionality really.

Thanks again!

Jon.

1 Like
4

How does it behave if you set the motion detector to dim to 0% or 1% instead of turning off? Maybe 0% dim is treated differently than “off” or maybe 1% is dim enough your lights will be off.

5

I looked to see if this would be possible the but the dim levels go in increments of 10 starting at 10% which still gives a glow on the bulb.