Your initial experience with Scenes and Automations?

SmartApps & Automations
1

I am a beginner in SmartThings and want to understand how can scenes and automations be helpful and apart from pre-bult ones, which scenes and automations have you created?
Can in some way you can share your home setup?

Thanks

2

I’m very new to SmartThings as well so really interested to see what people come back with. Here’s what I have setup at the moment:
Automations:

  1. Light up the 2 floor lamps in my living room 30 mins before sunset.
  2. Send an alert to my phone whenever my SmartThings Multipurpose sensor contact is broken. (I use this for alerts when my shed door is opened.
  3. Switch on lights in my understairs bathroom whenever motion is detected. And switch them off after 30 seconds of no motion.
  4. Toggle the state of lights from off to on or vice versa whenever a button is pressed. I have this in the bedroom for bedside lamps and another version running in the living room for manually switching on the floor lamps.
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3

Scenes:
-L Bedtime: turn off overhead light, turn on lamp, turn on ceiling fan, turn on white noise in the baby’s room.
-Movie night: turn off living room lights, turn on adjacent hallway light to low, close blinds near TV.
-Blinds - open and close various groupings of blinds (iBlinds) depending on sun position at that time of day.

Automations:
-Unlock door when phone presence has arrived and garage door opens.
-Turn off all lights, lock doors at bedtime.
-Change between modes home / away / night based on time and mobile presence.

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4

At our house, we distinguish between Day (sunrise to sunset), Night (sunset until when I go to sleep) and Asleep as location.modes.

Bedtime scene turns on a pathway of lights from the living room to my bedroom, turns off the tv in the living room.

Good night scene turns off the pathway of lights from Bedtime, changes location.mode to Asleep.

Good morning scene changes the location.mode to Day.

While the Location.mode is Day, the motion sensors in the bedroom are ignored.

While the location.mode is Night, the motion sensors in the bedroom trigger the overhead bedroom light. :bulb:

While the Location.mode is Asleep, the motion sensors in the bedroom do not turn on the overhead light, but instead turn on a soft nightlight. :sleeping: :zzz:

Some Automations:

  1. At 5 pm, turn an LED lightstrip near the TV orange, a reminder to feed the pets.

  2. At sunset -15 minutes, turn on some lights around the house if anyone is home.

  3. When I come through the front gate, turn the LED light strip near my housemate’s TV blue, which lets him know that I am coming in. Once I have come in the house, turn that light off again. (If it stays blue for too long, he knows that I am having a hard time getting in the house. I am quadriparetic, and for various reasons I might have difficulty getting in. The most common is a delivery person leaving something on the wheelchair ramp. :rage:. when he is playing video games, he ignores his phone and texts, so the light is our signal.)

  4. When the table lamp is turned on in the family room, turn on the overhead light in that room as well.

  5. when I get home, unlock the front door. If it is after sunset, also turn on the porch light in the entry light.

  6. when the closet door is opened, turn on the closet light

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5

Doing a lot of what others above are doing so I don’t want to repeat them but to add I have a 2nd floor hallway with little light during early evening so I use a SmartApp called “Smart Lighting” that turns on the 2nd floor hall lights 60 minutes before sunset and then turns it off 60 minutes after sunrise.

Smart Lighting is a SmartApp you can add to the phone app that is easy to use. I use it to control many lighting automation inside and outside of my house

6

Thanks Mark for the detailed infomation. Do you trigger these using scenes
Has it ever happened your automation ran unwantedly and you had to undo it?
Thanks!

7

Thanks Pogga for reply.
Has it ever happened your automation ran unwantedly and you had to undo it?
Thanks!

8

How did you learn about smartapps? Do you use any other SmartApps, have any other smartapp ideas etc? Thanks

9

I got my logic wrong once or twice when learning but no, never ran unexpectedly.