Use light switch turning on to trigger timer?

I would like turning on the switch for my smart bulb to go online to trigger a timer that keeps it lit for 3h? Any ideas on this matter? (It is a trådfri bulb).

What country are you in? There are a couple of options for this which are not available in all regions. :thinking:

Intersting! I am in Sweden. Is it hardware or software differences between regions?

Software difference. For reasons no one has ever explained. Samsung has limited some features, such as the “smart lighting“ feature, to specific regions. And specifically the Nordic countries have not had access to Smart lighting. But I don’t know why.

There are multiple ways to accomplish what you want to do, it’s just a question of which options will be available to you. :thinking:

The smart lighting app:

And of course you could just create a routine:

Thanks for your answers. Smart lighting does not seem to be an option for me in Sweden.

Just to be clear, my intention is to use a “dumb” switch to turn the electricity on. Once the bulb comes back online, I want it to automatically turn on and then stay on for a specified time.

You should have mentioned that you are using a dumb switch to turn a smart bulb on and off…

Get a smart switch or a button to control your bulb.

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@Andreas_Roedl makes a very important point. With the exception of the Sengled brand, manufacturer instructions for almost all smart bulbs will say that they should always be kept on power. Not turned on and off with a dumb switch.

Although the smart bulbs can handle an occasional rare power outage, like from a storm, if you are turning them on and off regularly, restoring the power from the dumb switch creates “inrush current” which can damage the sensitive radio inside the Smart bulb, reducing its useful life and making an expensive bulb that much more expensive.

So it’s best to leave these bulbs always on power and let them turn their light on and off by command.

There are a number of different smart switches and smart switch covers, depending on the country you are in, which can be used to give you a wall switch, which can turn a smart bulb on and off without actually killing the current to it.

If you use a smart control of that type, then your original question becomes pretty easy. It’s just a matter of setting up the timer.

But if you are using a dumb switch, everything becomes much more complicated. You either have to add an additional smart device onto the current branch, which can recognize when the current is flowing again or you have to put some kind of contact sensor or motion sensor right next to the physical switch in order to capture the physical movement there. :thinking:

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Okay! Thanks for the detailed answer. My original post was posted inside an old thread that was treating the topic of routines triggered by a device status change from offline to online. Someone moved my post as a new thread. I can absolutely see that my question was difficult to understand when not in this context. Sorry about that…

So my takeaway from this is:

  • There is no simple way to base actions on bulbs becoming “online” in the system.
  • It is not advisable to power electricity on and off for these kinds of devices regularly.

For this specific lamp, a smart switch is not an option at the moment. It is connected to the same wiring as another lamp that I would have difficulty integrating to smartthings. Since I will have to turn the “dumb” switch on and off regularly, I guess I just have to live with a dumb bulb until the other lamp is changed.

Thank you both for your answers!

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Get a Tapo L530/L535 for about 8 bucks and see if their cloud can turn it off after a reconnect.

I think the bulb can remember a schedule and maybe more than that.

In the Tapo app you can create a routine like IF bulb on THEN turn off after three hours. This routine is executed by the cloud.

You can integrate Tapo in Smartthings but in your case, I wouldn’t.

I recently replaced all my Tapo bulbs with another brand, so you have to check it out yourself. It’s only a few bucks.