YES! Modes and routines are quintessential ST features. If they go…well I guess we all need to get a few minimotes to practice how the future ST automation looks like…
You know. Been stewing on this one for a while. Since day one of RM, I put a simple rule to restrict lights on motion if the switch is on. It has worked flawlessly. I have the same restriction in Smart Light but using mode instead of switch. The same way I used to have many automations for the longest time. Since v2, the smart light fails regularly, I don’t think I would be overstating, to say weekly, but didn’t actually logged the events…
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I honestly believe folks are just expecting too much from ST.
Yes, they advertise that it does certain things.
Yes, the potential is there
Yes, there are major issues
I guess it’s just me… I worked for the government for 20+ years before retiring…
I just expect everything to be a dead pig in lipstick… Even when when presented with a dead pig in lipstick… I expect it to no be that good…
Hmmmmmm…
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Are you sure this isn’t just a bug in Smart Lighting? Try the same thing with RM and see if it works.
I did couple of weeks ago, and it failed twice…
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There’s a common theme between opinions like this… they came from Wink 
But seriously, ST definitely has its issues but it’s NOTHING like Wink where we came from.
Everyone should imagine having very similar issues, but it’s NORMAL for things to take anywhere between 5 and 15 seconds for things to happen 
Still love ST, still never going back to Wink and I haven’t even tried Rule Machine yet but I’m loving what I see!
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Hold on to the silver bullet for as long as you can. You never know when you need it 
I am very glad you’re loving it…For the most part I do too. Did you get smart vents yet? I’ve installed my first 10 yesterday. They are awesome. (sorry this last line was more for @bamarayne 
)
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I’ve got both ST Routines and Rule Machine setup. Was hoping that if one failed the other would catch it. Guess that was wishful thinking. Still have a heck of a time getting modes to change, and I’ve always got to check to see if the thermostat was changed over correctly. Pretty basic stuff that used to work fine a couple\few months ago.
You should jump on that RM boat… Just saying the word Wink will make you feel dirty… Lol! I remember those days!
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I’ve sat down with RM a couple times to write up a “quick rule” and each time realized that I need to read the docs before I make a fool of myself here. 
Once I wrap my brain around it, I foresee a lot of extra apps going away.
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Just my experience lately. https://simplerulebuilder.com/ gets my vote over routines. Rule Machine is probably just as good, just in app only, no Web UI. I think Rule Machine has more triggers actually.
This is really weird, but I haven’t been having issues with modes not changing or Smart Lighting missing these past couple of weeks as I’ve been switching over from v1. In fact v1, for me, was much more unreliable - it would skip things very often. I don’t think that v2 has missed a mode change on me yet - great, famous last words…
I was going to look into Rule Machine but it hasn’t been a priority yet. The biggest limitation, for me anyway, with modes is that there can only be one at a time active. I’d like to have overlapping modes. For instance, I may be home and watching a movie and upstairs - way too many combinations to manage if you try and flatten it out.
My biggest problems have been the app stability - it is constantly giving errors and failing to load messages. I think that it really, really doesn’t like you switching between locations often and that’s what I’m doing as I move things over from the v1 location to the v2 location. It does ask me to relogin occasionally but usually only have a particularly bad crash/hang. The recent feature downgrade of hard coding “My Home” instead of the location name has really bitten me several times - wasted probably a couple of hours, at least, when jumping back and forth between locations and adding devices back into the old v1 hub - schlage door locks are especially annoying to switch over and then when you get the location wrong…
My failures where hard to describe. Most of the routine would work but some parts didn’t. It would trigger but some actions would fail. Oh well, don’t need.
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[quote=“dmw999, post:33, topic:35689”]
The biggest limitation, for me anyway, with modes is that there can only be one at a time active. I’d like to have overlapping modes. For instance, I may be home and watching a movie and upstairs - way too many combinations to manage if you try and flatten it out.
[/quote]If you’re looking for the functionality of overlapping modes, I recommend replacing your modes with virtual switches (aka simulated switches). If you had a separate virtual switch for “Home”, “Upstairs” and “Watching Movie” you could setup a routine called something like “Watching Movies Upstairs” that turns on those 3 switches.
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I use routines to activate Rule Machine Triggers. One example; I use a single Routine to open and close my garage door. Everyone in my family has a mobile device but not everyone has a car…cuz they’re kids. So they can operate the garage door from their device with a single button on the notification screen. Easy! I created a routine called “Garage Door,” which does nothing. Also a conditional trigger that, when the routine is activated checks to see if the door is open or closed then performs the opposing command. IE; door = open -> close … door = closed -> open