I would like my motion sensors to activate my dimmers in two profiles.
Home - motion detected, dimmers on full bright.
Sleeping - motion detected, dimmer on 20%
I have this setup now using actions/lighting/turn on where there is motion. I have a Hello, Home command to switch to “Sleeping” mode when there is no movement for 30 minutes after 10pm.
Everything works great, but since I have two apps (profiles) setup for each dimmer/motion combination, I get two switches in “Lights & Switches” in the dashboard (one for the Home mode, one for the Away mode).
Is there any way I can make this work with only having 1 switch appear in the Lights & Switches menu?
I took a completely different approach to the mode/dimmer level scenario.
In thinking about tying modes to lighting scenes or levels, it quickly became apparent to me that I was going to end up with a ton of modes.
For me the modes reflect the state of the homes occupants, so I was able to use the stock ones, though I added vacation.
Presence and motion or lack of drive the hello home actions, which then change the modes.
This didn’t solve the dimmer level situation in relation to modes.
I live in the pacific northwest, where the outside lux level doesn’t always correlate to time of day, sunrise sunset etc.
Setting dimmer levels using a time based approach where I live is rather limiting and unlikely to be correct most of the time.
My solution was to completely separate the smartapp dimmer level management functions from the dimmer on/off functions.
All the normal smart apps turn on and off the dimmers as usual based on whatever I choose, I then wrote a smart app that subscribes to dimmer on() events, it then resets the dim level (up or down) based on configurable LUX set points using an external LUX sensor. There are 3 LUX set points and 4 default dimmer levels that can be configured. Additionally, each dimmer has it’s own default override setting should you not want to use the defaults for a specific light.
This allows using the stock lights and switches apps which are tied in nicely to hello home ect, but you aren’t stuck with only one hard coded LUX and dimmer level for the few stock apps that support LUX readings.
Made a lot of sent to me, and it works well.