The Groovy smart app Vacation Lighting has been faithfully doing its job for years. . . .but clearly with Groovy shut down, no longer. I am looking at options to replace it, and having dug through the forums (here and in SharpTools), I can see many others are too. I figured might as well start a topic so we can brain storm options. In an ideal world I would like something to start at sunset and cycle some lights (that I can select) at an interval of at least a couple hours, until a set time of day (say 1am) and turn them back off. If someone comes home, turn them off. Seeing that is pretty difficult I have settled for a target of turn on one set for a few hours then turn those off and turn on some others for a few hours, then off at a given time or if someone comes home.
I have seen the suggestion to use the SmartThings Labs app No Worries While Away thrown out, but I just see too many issues with that. The biggest is that it seems it can only be time based. Since sunset can move up to 4 hours over the year, a fixed starting time makes that a non starter out of the gate. I didnât get far enough to actually try it, but based on comments/question from others, not convinced it can do multiple modes (I use Away and Vacation) and almost sounds like you have to manually activate it when you want it. So I rule that out.
Then I moved on to look at Routines. I thought I could create a routine that kicks off when I leave and for the first 3 hours turns on one set of lights and then another routine for the next 3 hours a different set of lights. . . .but I canât seem to figure out a way to do more than a 60 min offset which lands me right back into the issue of specific times and sunset moving up to 4 hours over the year. Plus I canât see so the 2 routines can be mutually exclusive in time, again due to the limit of 60 min offset.
So I then looked at Smart Lighting (old version, waiting for migration). The good news is you can do more than a 60 min offset in the condition, but I ran aground trying to make 2 routines mutually exclusive since you canât set a condition to be from sunset to sunset +3 hours as you can only reference sunset once. I could flip the logic and say start at sunset only if away/vacation, but I assume thatâs wonât trigger if I leave an hour after sunset as the trigger is specifically sunset.
I looked at SharpTools and think could come up with something pretty close to my min requirement by having a rule that triggers at sunset, change to away/vacation, execute a Scene, delay, execute another scene. My issue is that the amount of logic I have to build in to each check after delay is a quite a lot. Is it still away, is it still vacation, is it after sunset, and is it before designated stop time. If I use 3 hours as my target cycle I think I have to code 2 or 3 âloopsâ. I think I could make this work, just trying to avoid spending the time to create such a heavy rule if possible.
At this point I think I am just going to have a routine kick off if after sunset and vacation/away then turn them all off when I get home or if still away/vacation and hit midnight. Not smart, not elegant, not as good. . . but such is life with all the âprogressâ happening. My hope is they will update routines to allow a more than 60 min offset which would make me at least able to do 2 âloopsâ pretty easily.