Happy New Year if not a bit late, I was hoping to clean up my automations and combine some if possible just to make thing easier to navigate as well as to hopefully learn so I can progress.
I have a bathroom motion sensor that I would like to turn on the lights when motion is detected at night and in the same rule have it so when no motion is detected for 10min at any time of day the lights will turn off. Is this possible in one rule? I have this but it doesn't seem to turn off in the said time?
I also have another motion detector in the hallway, that I tried to get to turn on the light is nobody is in bed with the same type of goal of turning on when motion is detected and off when nobody is detected but this one doesn't work even to turn the light on most the time
The best way to troubleshoot Rule Machine is to turn on logs and figure out what the rule is seeing/doing.
A couple points: motion sensors have their own timeouts. I have some that go from 15 seconds to 30 minutes. Your 10 minute wait gets added to the sensor timeout. Also, it's just a form thing, but you want to add an 'END IF' to the actions.
Finally, there is an app called Room Lighting that is built specifically for your motion sensor triggers. It can be a little daunting at first, but it's not too hard for a straightforward scenario that you have
You may also want to check out the built-in "Motion and Mode Lighting" App. It is the predecessor to today's "Room Lighting" app mentioned above by @bill.d. I find the "Motion and Mode Lighting" app easier to get started with, and it still works flawlessly for most of my motion based lighting requirements.
Thank you, I will give this ago. I had a look at the room lighting, it looks like it will be nice when set up but I don't have any modes set up and working correctly at the moment and it looks like it uses this as a trigger . Thank you for you help. I have sent them back to basic rules at the moment and will have a go at getting something working that looks a bit nicer soon thank you again
I would recommend using modes, as they truly can make your automations so much simpler to create and manage. I use the "Mode Manager" app to properly adjust modes based on time of day and whether or not my wife and I are both away or not. This then allows for automations like the following (using Motion and Mode Lighting)
The issue with your lights not turning off is that you're using the Wait for Events action. For the ELSE to run the rule has already triggered on an inactive event. You are then telling the rule to wait for another inactive event, which can't happen since the next event will be active. Change your Wait for Event to Wait for Expression and the Off should work.
Edit: you can also change your Wait for event to Wait for event: --> elapsed time: 0:02:00
Room Lighting does not require any modes to be used. You can set up user configurable periods. Here is your first scenario. I set up 2 periods: SR for sunrise and SS for sunset. For SS period I deactivated the 'Act' and 'Off' columns as you don't want the sensor to do anything then.
Thank you, I have put a automation together with your guidance, I will try and get mode manager working I like the idea of the automations that can be done with that too. thank you
This didn't work lol and I got in trouble, I will keep to basic rules for now and just make 2 rules of it thank you for your help I will look more into using this in future
Room Lighting is built for your scenarios. It can also be a complex app. When something doesn't work as you think it should you need to look at the logs. They will point you in the right direction. The documentation is reasonably good. If you want more help post the setup and logs and explain what didn't work. Good luck.
I am having issues with my hub at the moment so I may not have given this new automation a chance, I am losing zigbee and zwave devices everywhere. I am trying a soft rest at the mo. I see there our new buttons to reset the zigbbe and zwave radios so may need to try that later.
Thank you for your advice on the lighting app
Make sure to post your issue on the community. What version of the Hubitat platform are you on? They actually have gotten rid of the radio reset buttons recently as they are really the very last resort. As part of your troubleshooting process I'd suggest 1) shutting down the hub and remove power for 30 seconds before restarting, and 2) updating to the latest release.
Thank you for your help and advice, I haven't tried to reset the radio, I assume that my hub wasn't updating correctly if they had already got rid of the reset button. I will check to see if my hub is up to date. I think I have my hub running correctly now. There is just one zwave button device I can't get back and batteries our on there way for that device before I go to deep into fixing it.
I will give your advice on getting my automations fixed now. sorry for delay. It has been a panic to get everything working. I Have limited knowledge but am always trying to learn
