First, I have quite a few lights in and outside of the house controlled by smart apps for scheduled on and off times with no issues. The problem is that my house tends to be naturally on the dark side, not the force, but in sunlight. I purchased an Aeon multi sensor to turn on lights before my scheduled apps would based on low light conditions earlier in the day. Having said that, I need an app that would do this but have finite start and stop times. The reason being is that at, say 7:45pm the lights come on by schedule, off at 10:15 pm. I don’t want the Aeon turning them back on at 10:16 because it is dark again. Additionally, I also need the aeon’s app logic to ignore the rise in light level after it turns lights on.
The second question is with the aforementioned smart app that I use to control my in and outdoor lights. It is set by times of the day. I need to know if it is possible to go one step further and have days of the week? These wonderfully automated lights go out on Friday and Saturday night while the party is still going on.
1a.: Only come on during select period. – To Turn on only during a set time, incorporate parts of my program: “Turn on when Open, Only at Night.” Obviously you need to strip out the part that reference the “when door opens” as you just want them on. If you set your times to only like 1:00pm to 7:45pm then the app won’t trigger the lights after 7:45 due to low light.
1b.: Don’t turn off just because the light turned on. – This is tricky here, because you really want the lights to come on when it’s dark, but when there is enough light you want the lights off… how how can the light sensor tell if there is enough natural light vs. artificial light? For example, 1:00pm a storm rolls in and it’s very cloudy. ST turns on the light because there is little to no natural light. But by 3:00 the storm has blown by and now there is enough natural light. But ST can’t tell the the outside light has increased enough to turn off the inside lights unless you have a sensor outside and inside.
I think an ideal solution here is to take advantage of the motion sensing part of your AEON sensor. Basically I’d write an app that looks for motion and low light levels, and then turns on the light. If there is motion but enough light… then it wouldn’t turn on the switch. If there is low light, but no motion… then again it wouldn’t turn on the light. But if motion and low light, then the lights come on. Check out Chad Monroe’s “Smart Light Controller.”