[OBSOLETE] Smart Porch Light

Got mine for $20 each, I think, almost 6 years ago. Still work like a charm. I guess I’m luckier than you are. :smile:

I figure most people interested in this primarily to not bother their neighbors. It’s not a concern for me since my neighbor’s houses are far enough not to be bothered by my porch light and I don’t mind my house to be well lit at night.

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Mine is set like most, Porch/patio lights on at dusk 10% off at 10pm, then on only if backdoor opens/someone comes home/or motion in driveway at 100%
My flood lights supplement, anyone arriving/fence gate opens/or stranger in driveway, 6 floods at 100%.

The sunrise and sunset scheduling is fixed. I also added the following features.

  • Added an offset option for sunrise and sunset
  • Added trigger for motion sensors
  • Added trigger for vibration sensors (Door knock)*
  • Added trigger for contact sensors*
  • Added option to overlay a button on the app icon to trigger lights
  • Added individual brightness settings for all events
  • Adjusted settings pages layout and messaging to try to make setup easier.
  • Added option to have events pushed to hello, home

To Do:

  • Remember light levels if they’re adjusted outside of the app and reset to default on the next sunset
  • Add trigger for doorbells.
  • Suppress subsequent events of different types if a trigger is still active. This will prevent changes to the light level if multiple events with different brightness settings are triggered.

*I don’t currently own a contact sensor or vibration sensor so neither of those have been properly tested outside of the simulator. I’ll retest once SmartThings releases their new Multi Sensor.

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This is the goal for my outside lights. I am going to tweak an app that is already out there.

  • Lights come on at sunset at a dim level of 5%
  • If a motion sensor is detected the lights go to 100% for 5 minutes
  • Lights turn off at 1:00am
  • If a motion sensor is detected after 1:00am the lights go to 100% for 5 minutes
  • The lights turn on 30 minutes before sun rise
  • The lights turn off at sunrise

This app does all but the last 2. You could easily modify it to get the result you want.

Is anybody else having trouble with this app? It worked fine for me until recently. The last few days I have to re-run the app daily or it won’t fire.

That sounds suspiciously like the symptoms of Sudden Scheduler Death Syndrome. There’s a lengthy topic on it here:

No fix or ETA on a fix exists.

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It’s not the app. ST is having the regular schedule/sunrise/sunset problem. All my apps with schedule are having issues. Can’t wait for hub 2.

I am definitely thinking this is SSDS because if I restart the app it works for like a day. Anybody here a better coder than me that can add a watchdog function to this app? Similar to how pollster restarts itself?

I noticed the issue a few days ago too. I’m going to try to fix it this weekend.

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And 2 weeks later it’s fixed…probably.

Sorry it took so long. I think I’ve got it all worked out. I’ve changed the way that events are scheduled. I’m no longer using the built in sunrise/sunset schedulers and I’ve added a watch dog function as suggested by @ADamL. I’ve even taken it a step further and added a method to check that the watchdog schedule is still running. The watchdog check is run on every trigger and it’s restarted if needed. There’s still room for improvement but this should be a good start.

Also in this update:

  • Now your light levels will be remembered until the next night when changed manually at the switch during standby. This is for the standby light levels. The trigger levels will not be effected.
  • Cleaned up the main settings screen. Unused triggers are now collapsed by default.

What devices are people using for outdoor motion sensors? For the driveway for example?

My understanding is that PIRs were really fickle when it pertains to outdoors.

I fixed a bug that was preventing the acceleration (door knock) trigger from working. If you’re using that feature you should update the app. The updated code is at github.

Love the way your light works, I thought of something I’m not sure you can incorporate or not but since it’s Christmas time can when the light is in its “dim” mode can we have the color of the light red, green, blue etc. considering we are using a rgbw bulb and then when someone arrives goes to the set brightness in white and then go back to the pre describes color in the dim mode in other words be able to select the color of the dim mode and go to white at the desire level when someone arrives.

Has anyone else had a problem with the light not shutting off at sunrise. Three days in a row I’ve shut it off manually because it not automatically going off. It comes on fine and dims correctly or brightens with motion just fine. Just not shutting off at sunrise. Had been working perfectly for two weeks.

Well after I posted that it started working correctly on the 4 day. I guess I just have a gremlin in the works. I really do like this app.

@jdiben, I love this app and have been using this for my porch light. I have since got some motion and lux sensors inside my house and tried using it for my kitchen to turn up a light I normally keep on very dim and bring back down to that same dim level.

If possible, I would like to change the default sunset to sunrise (+/- an offset) to specific times of day instead of sunset to sunrise. How could I go about modifying this app or getting it modified to allow that choice?

@jdiben Great App !..thanks, any thoughts or tips to adjust code to configure seconds for dime instead minutes ? For a stairs light project, minutes could be too much time to dim stairs light. THANKS for your recommendations!

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Try changing line 522 from

runIn(60 * autoOffMinutes, autoOff)

to

runIn(autoOffMinutes, autoOff)

That should treat whatever value you set for minutes to be evaluated as seconds. You may also want to change the min and max values just above that line. As it is now, you will be limited to between 1 and 30 seconds.

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Working !! Thanks a lot !

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