Syncing two simple lights. Is something broken or am I doing it wrong?

I’m new to Smartthings. Have dabbled in automation stuff but am generally a newbie. As such, I don’t know if I just don’t know what I’m doing or if something isn’t working as it should.

I have two yard lights that I would like to basically sync together to sort of emulate a 3 way circuit. One is outside my front door, controlled by a single switch inside. The other is outside my detached garage door, controlled by a single switch inside the garage. When I turn one on, I’d like the other to turn on. When turning one off, the other should turn off, etc. etc.

I have a Smartthings Hub V2 and in each of the two light switches I have installed an Enerwave ZWN-RSM1-PLUS Z-wave relay.

The devices are showing up and seem to be working well. I can actuate both lights from the app and the old toggle switches work as well. I have created 4 automations – if house turns on, turn garage on. If house turns off, turn garage off. If garage turns on, turn house on, and if garage turns off, turn house off. When actuating the lights from the app, the automations appear to work correctly (if a little slow).

When I try using the physical switches in the garage, everything works fine. If I toggle the garage light switch on, the house turns on as well. If off, both go off. However, no automation seems to work when I toggle the physical switch in the house. The house light turns on and off by the switch, but the garage light does not respond. I can hear the relay clicking in the switch so I know the relay is controlling the light. So wtf?

Is this like a loop problem with the automations? Why is it working fine with one switch but not the other? I’ve tried creating the automations in different order but it’s always the house that doesn’t work. Should I be taking a different approach to the automation?

Any suggestions?

It can definitely be done but the exact method will depend on which version of the smartthings app you are using as the rules engines are a little different.

FAQ: how to tell which version of the SmartThings mobile app that you have

That said, both versions have an official “smart light feature” and I believe both app versions have a “mirror” option, and that’s all you need. So you set up a virtual three-way where one switch mirrors the other.

To be honest, I can’t remember if you need to set up two mirrors (one starting from switch A and one starting from switch B) or not. But you definitely don’t need four automations, and that’s likely the problem.

But as long as you can turn them both on and off from the app now, mirroring should give you the virtual three-way you were looking for. :sunglasses:

Thank you for that info. I had skipped right over the mirror thing when I was playing with it earlier. That seems to be exactly what I want to do, but unfortunately it still isn’t working.

I deleted my automations and set up a single mirror behavior as you described. It works the same as it was before with the four automations though it is quite a bit faster to respond now.

I think there might be a problem with my house relay.

When I physically toggle the switch in the garage, I can see the status update in near real-time on the app. When I physically toggle the switch in the house, the app does not reflect the change. Again, I can successfully toggle the virtual switch in the app and the light responds correctly – it just seems that the physical actuation of the switch is not being “heard” by the system.

Do I have a faulty relay or is something else happening?

If the app does not reflect the change, then there’s no status for the mirror rule to respond to, so that would definitely be the problem. But I’m not sure what would cause it.

I’m tired today, so I’m going to have to leave other people to help you with the next steps. :sunglasses:

So it turns out that this is a known issue with these relays. Not sure why I was having trouble with one and not the other, but either way, I updated the device handler for the one and it’s all good now.

Thanks!

1 Like