How are people doing lighting automations with sunrise sunset as an automation & not smart lighting. You cant select sunrise sunset only. Thanks dom.
In my time zone, Madrid GMT + 2h, sunset and sunrise work well in both automation and smart lighting.
Smartthings App android 11.
I do not understand exactly what you mean by this
Do you mean you canāt combine sunrise/sunset and a specific time when setting a time range?
When I select sunrise & sunset in period of time in automations, it makes me select another condition. So I selected location home & it didnt work. It works in smart lighting. . I thinkā¦ well Iāll know tonight. So Iām wondering if anyone is having a similar issue or maybe can tell me a different way to do it. Iām just trying to light up my kitchen Cabinet light strips. If I select auto off in specific time, it doesnt give me sunset, only minutes & hours. Thanks dom
What condition are you using besides time and mode? If youāre only using time, you need to use a specific time not a range of time.
1 Like
It was only time & mode. If I do specific time, sunrise is not an option. Only minutes & hours. Thatās why I was asking how other people do theirs.
I understand that this is what you want to do:
If you use smart lighting you can with a single automation do this:
- At sunset (+/- X time) turn on lights Z + Turn off lights Z at sunraise (+/- x time).
With automations you have to use 2 automations:
- IF sunset (+/- X time) THEN turn on lights Z
- IF sunraise (+/- X time) THEN turn off lights Z
Smart Lighting is written especially to do common lighting and switching tasks which can actually be more complicated than they perhaps appear. They often combine two different actions into the one automation e.g. one when something happens and one for when it stops happening.
With Automations you tend to have to keep actions separate to do the same job and so need two.
Time periods is an example of this. Automations typically require you to have one Automation to say what happens at the start of a time period, and a separate one for the end.
You can select a time period in Automations but it is actually a passive restriction on when other conditions can activate pistons rather than an active pair of conditions in itself. Unfortunately it is packaged alongside the specific time option and it isnāt obvious it is something different.
1 Like
So I have to do 2 automationsā¦ok Iāll setup now to make sure it works tonight. Stinks that its 2 but it is what it is. Iām trying to do automations because I know one day smart lighting will be gone so I figured in slowly move everything over. With these lights Iām doing now, it just been an on going issue Iāve had.
Thanks
Dom
This works for me. I created a virtual switch called Sunrise/Sunset and use a Smart Lighting Routine to turn it On at sunrise and Off at sunset. Then I can use this Sunrise/Sunset virtual switch with my Automation depending on whether the Sunrise/Sunset virtual switch is On or or Off as the ātriggerā for the Automations. I got rid of a few Automations after I started using this Sunrise/Sunset virtual switch.
Iām waiting to see if this even works. Still have a few more minutes. If not, then Iāll try that. Thanks.
It worked. Kind of stinks needing 2 automations but at least it worked. Thanks everyone. Just curious, are any of you starting to move away from smart lighting yet?
The ones I use with motion sensors I will leave them in smart lighting until they implement in the automations, turn off when the movement stops, if they add it.
It works much better than turning off after x minutes or doing 2 automations, one to turn on and one to turn off.
And those that cannot be done in a simple way with automations, such as setting a sunset / sunraise period up to a fixed time and vice versa.
They made a list to try implement the things that can be done with smart lighting and cannot with automations.
If it can be done, I am hopeful they will.
I am trying to move everything to the Rules API. Rules are clearly already capable of doing much of what I need because they power Automations, however not everything is documented, if indeed exposed, so I canāt use them. So I still have a good dollop of Smart Lighting, mainly for motion controlled lighting.
Moving from Smart Lighting to Automations is not something I want to do. I made the mistake of moving my āpower allowanceā automations over but all the switches I was using had to be deleted and so were the Automations and I didnāt notice. I do not consider it acceptable to delete Automations, or to delete components of them and leave them running like nothing has happened. They should be flagged as in need of attention instead. So not for me if I can avoid them of for quick and dirty stuff.
2 Likes
@orangebucket so how can I try put the rules api? Is this something similar to webcore?
Itās in there when you select the option when motion stops. There is a slider to enable the amount of time it must stay in that state. You still canāt turn on and off within the same automation though.
Yes, that is what cannot be done.
The āeasiestā way IMO is to use it with Postman. But youāre pretty much coding raw JSON with it. But there are some examples for Rules API with Postman in their dev site you can use to get started
https://smartthings.developer.samsung.com/docs/rules/overview.html
Iāve started moving some over now that there are local Automations and the limit for number of automations has been raised