Trying to reproduce an automation

[tangential (John Harlow)]

I had an automation I built for my home back in 2015 that basically said that if my wife and I were both gone (using our phones as a presence sensor) and one of us arrived home to unlock the front door. It also said that if it was after sunset to also turn on a series of lights inside and outside the house for 10 minutes.

This automation worked great for me for almost 5 years but now that I’ve upgraded my app it is gone and I can’t seem to reproduce it.

If anyone has a good idea of how to do this with the latest tools, I would really appreciate some guidance.

Thanks

[mwav3 (Tim)]

Here’s a sample webcore piston you could import. If you want to know more about webcore click the link below.

However, I generally avoid any automation that automatically unlocks a door or opens a garage door. I automate locking doors, but if something goes wrong I don’t want someone to get into the house.

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

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…

[Ptbradford (Preston Todd Bradford)]

Thinking out loud. Could you create two automations? Add an arrival condition and a second condition between sunset and sunrise. Have it unlock the door and run a scene that turns on your required lights. On the second automation, give it the opposite condition, sunrise to sunset and don’t run the scene, only unlock the door.

I do the same thing but don’t have the sunrise sunset condition. Mine just always turns on specific lights even in the daytime I may have to try this myself

It would look like this I think

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[mwav3 (Tim)]

@Ptbradford

Could you create two automations? Add an arrival condition and a second condition between sunset and sunrise.

I was originally going to suggest a couple automations, however the OP also wants those lights that turn on when they get home to turn off after 10 minutes. I’m not quite sure how to automate that using the native automations. I’m sure it’s possible, but now you’re probably looking at 3 separate automations.

I use the automations section of Smartthings for anything simple, like turn a garage light on when the door opens. However, once things get beyond a couple steps, I usually find the automations part of the app is not enough to do everything. Webcore is currently the best rules engine with Smartthings for more complex automations.

I do have concerns for the future of webcore with the coming IDE phase out and the end of Groovy smartapps. I’m hopeful a new rules engine will replace it, since native automations just don’t meet more complex automations I need. So, if anyone does get into webcore now, they should know there’s no guarantee for its future and things may need to be redone at some point.