I am a newbie to Smartthings. I am trying to get a nice structured approach to setting up rules and actions from the start.
My first objective is to find out where the “best” place/app is to do certain types of automation.
For example using my iphone as presence sensor to trigger an event when I get home is too vague as the radius is too wide to be useful. what I want say is IF iphone is present and front door sensor triggers open then do something (e.g play welcome message on Sonos. The combination of the two is the real indicator of when I arrive home and not someone else in the house.
Another example is that I have put I vibration trigger on my entryphone as a way of triggering a sound on the sonos to alert me if someone has buzzed the intercom and I am somewhere in the apartment that I would not hear the buzzer.
I want say IF the entryphone buzzes AND there is no movement in front entrance hall (i.e vibration is not false alarm) then trigger sound?
Hi @skyrider, Rule Machine is very good, but don’t forget about SmartThings own Smart Lighting smartapp, and custom rules in Smart Home Monitor. I’ve got over 250 device in my environment, and a lot of automation. I use SHM and SL for all but 4 automations, and that’s where Rule Machine comes in.
Depending upon how complex you want to get, the built in SmartThings solutions may work just fine for you. Rule Machine is awesome, and in my opinion, should have been how ST should have started off with their smartapps.
Many thanks for this, going to give these a try now, will start with the SmartRules app for IOS as a tester, then will move onto Rules Machine once I know what I am doing to set up some nice clean logic and triggers.
Are you able to set multiple conditions in SHM and SL to do most of what you need? For example can you set a IF this is true (presence) AND there is no motion in the bedroom (or in the last 5 minutes) AND front door vibration detected, do this?
Hi @skyrider, that last AND condition is where ST falls short with SHM and SL. Rule Machine can easily handle multiple conditions like what you have in your example. That’s exactly where Rule Machine works perfectly for me.
I agree with the others that Rule Machine will probably be your best choice, but if you want an overview of the various options, this should help:
Also, since you mentioned that you have an iPhone, there is a third party app (iPhone only) that costs about $8 (+ $2 if you also want IBeacon support) that works very well if you want an if A while B then C. Not as powerful as Rule Machine (which is free), but very easy to use and a nice graphical interface. I like it a lot.
