I have a smartlights rule set up in my master bath, between sunset and sunrise, when the motion detector senses motion, the light is supposed to come on to 30%.
I am using a Sylvania A19 Smart bulb. Nothing fancy just a soft white bulb… Anyway, it works by issuing the command, touch on / off, tell Alexa to turn it on and off no problem. But when the SmartLIghting rule is activated, SmartThings shows that the light is on, but there is no light being produced…
So I wasn’t sure how to remove the dusk to dawn restrictions, so I simply deleted the rule and recreated it without the dusk to dawn, at least the first test, it works… At least to turn the light on…
Sorry for leaving this thread alone for so long… An update.
I gave up on the time of day filtering as it just won’t work, but I ran into more problems.
Most notably the 5 minute shut off caused problems when taking a shower. I moved the sensor, and added a door sensor so with me in the shower I can keep the door open, or anyone short or tall with the door closed the light stays on. The issue is my wife hates having the bathroom door closed when she is showering, and she’s too short for the motion sensor to see her over the shower curtain.
I am considering mounting the motion sensor on the ceiling, but that would put the sensor behind the light fixture, which means it may not catch us as we walk in at first…
For the time being, I need to make this work with the hardware I have. I will be repaiting the ceiling shortly and installing a different light fixture, which will allow a better field of “view” for a ceiling mounted motion sensor which should then “see” pretty much everywhere in the bathroom…
We have a virtual switch for each room of the house that we call “Do Not Disturb”. When the switch is on, the light will not change state regardless of the motion sensor. We use Google Home to turn the do not disturb switches on/off.
Does your wife do something predicable before showering? You could use the a virtual switch on a timer to disable the motion sensor. We sleep with a ceiling fan and a box fan at night. When the fans are on the motion sensor is deactivated. When the fans turn off, it starts a 5 minute timer and the DND virtual switch doesn’t turn off until the timer is done. In our case, during the timer, the bathroom lights and the closet light are also dimmed to bare minimums. Think about her routine and you might be able to see a solution.
It still may not work from the motion sensor because the clouds of steam from the shower can prevent the sensor from detecting accurately.
Almost all of the non-camera “motion Sensors” that work with smartthings are actually PIR sensors: passive infrared. They work by detecting tiny changes in heat as it passes across the detection field. The Environment gets so complex in terms of temperature changes when the shower is running that you can get really erratic results. It may think someone is in the bathroom long after they have left. It may get confused and think the environment has stabilized even though the person is still there.
Pretty much everybody who wants to do the equivalent of motion sensing in a room where a shower is running ends up using some combination of humidity, temperature, and contact sensors instead of PIR sensors.
You can find lots of discussion of this in the forum. Just search for bathroom.
By the way, one of the easiest and least expensive ways for adults to simplify this is just to put a Contact sensor on the medicine cabinet, Open the cabinet door slightly when the room is occupied, including when you’re in the shower, and then close the medicine chest again as you leave.
Or you can put this on a drawer if the vanity has drawers. It just gets to be routine and becomes a very reliable, very low-cost way of indicating to the system that the room is occupied even when the door itself is opening and closing.
This is also a good method for families with little kids who give the kids a bath and may have other kids or the dog running in and out.
Anyway, I just mention it because it can also be a good solution for someone who likes to leave the door open when they shower.
That doesn’t seem a whole lot smarter than just using the wall switch. I’m wanting automation less manual intervention. I will say thus far having moved the motion sensor to the ceiling where it has a Fuller view of what’s going on in the space I haven’t had any problems.