Smart lighting sequence on/off

Let me apologize if this is stupid.
i’ve been looking and tinkering unsuccessfully for a week. In smarting lighting (sl), i want different lights to go on and off in sequence as if i was walking around the house. i have three ‘apps’ in sl but only the first ever activates…i thought i had it working a month ago.
So:

  • can sl do this?
  • do i need core?
  • could ifttt do it?

I’m looking for easy of course vs learning core.

Thanks in advance

Are you trying to create the impression that someone is home when the house is empty?

If so, you can definitely do it in smartlighting, but it’s going to take multiple automations so that you have one light turn On when another one turns off and you probably use the power allowance feature to have a light turn off after A fixed period of time. But the problem is that it’s going to be exactly the same pattern every time if you do it this way, which might not be what you want.

If you want something more complicated, then Webcore would be the choice. (Not core, which has been discontinued since it was replaced by Webcore.) see the FAQ:

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

If by chance you have an Amazon echo device, they offer this kind of simulation as a feature and you don’t have to do anything except turn on the feature. It will learn over time which lights you turn on when and then it will use those to create a simulation when you are away from the house. It takes a few days before it gets the pattern, though. But it’s definitely the easiest way to do this kind of thing. Amazon calls this “away lighting“ and it’s part of the guard feature.

IFTTT Will not help with this.

So there are multiple ways to do this. The most customized results will come from using webcore, and there are lots of people who will be glad to help you get started.

If you want to do it with only the official smartthings features, you can, but it involves planning in advance exactly which lights will turn on when, and it will be tedious to set up.

Or if you happen to have an Amazon echo, they have the feature built-in if you choose to use it.

Also, you didn’t say what brand and model of lights you are using. Both Hue and Lutron Caseta offer this feature in their own apps, but only for their own devices, and I don’t think there’s a way to trigger it from smartthings. Although you might be able to use echo as an intermediary, but that could get a little tricky.

JDRoberts,

Yes ,that’s the application i want. I was trying to use turn on and off at specific times. ( I already have lights that trigger on events such as Ring.)
So on the sl app i have three lines, is there any such thing as a logical AND that can go between them?

No Alexa.
I did find vacation lighting director on core.

Vacation Lighting Director is a standalone custom smartapp. It is not part of core. (The rules in core and webcore are called “pistons.“) it’s pretty old, and I don’t know if it’s been updated to work with the new app or not, but you can certainly try it. :sunglasses: