Cleaning lady - help with a rule

@bjcowles @neonturbo What do you think? Will this work?

I'm not a RM expert, but I think that'll work.

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Me either. I wondered if that delay would work? It's in with the rest of the rule because I just want it to change right away then wait 3.5 hours to reverse everything.

The way it's written, all of the rules are resumed 3 hrs after they are paused. Then the mode switches back to away 30 mins after that. Was that your intention?

Yes 3 hours for the rules and 3h30m for the mode.

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I have two suggestions:

a) Can you give Sarah access to your WiFi? And then use something like @jwetzel1492's iPhone WiFi presence sensor (works with iPhone & Android) to determine when she's left?

b) I have a Fingbox (cost all of $99 a couple years ago). It integrates with IFTTT, and I trigger a Hubitat switch to turn on/off when the Fingbox detects/no-longer-detects Pattie's phone. Using a Fingbox obviates the need to provide access to your WiFi network.

And now, I must go back to watching football :slight_smile:

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I may look into that.

Yup - the iPhone WiFi presence sensor requires no additional hardware or IFTTT integration. But it does require that you provide her WiFi access.

Getting a Fingbox does require new hardware to be purchased, but can detect her phone's presence without providing her WiFi access.

Sure hope you didn't forget any devices in there! :grin:

I am far from a RM expert, but it looks logical to me. The only thing I would add is you should probably add an ENDIF at the end. Like Bravenel says, leaving the ENDIF off is like leaving the period off the end of the senten

See, it just doesn't look right.

I can't believe I forgot it! I know this. Rookie mistake. Ha! Added. (I'm so embarrassed)

Rookie here too! I am picking things up slowly.

I've been into home automation for about 5 years and on HE for almost two. When I say rookie mistake, I'm kind've chastising myself for doing it. Hurrying never helped anything.

I'm looking for a similar rule for 'Maid Mode.' I'm less than 2 weeks on Hubitat so pardon my lack of knowledge.

I have created a number of modes - Morning, Day, Evening, Night, and Away. I'd like to add a 'Maid' mode. I want to set that mode by a button press and have it last 8 hours. Trying to make it easy on the wife where she can just hit a button and its set for the day.

What I am having a hard time figuring out is how to get the mode to set for 8 hours THEN revert back to the correct mode (Day, Evening, etc). I want it to work very similar to how the Away mode works but it seems as though you can only have one mode like Away behaves. I also want to be sure the system would be prevented from going into Away mode while in Maid Mode. I have a new system so I only have RM4 logic to work with. TIA

Welcome to Hubitat. First, the only way you learn new things is if you ask.
So ... back to topic -> I thought about creating a mode, but then I'd have to change too much. what I ended up doing was giving my cleaning lady a lock code. I wrote a rule that turns on the lights in the entire house and then pauses the necessary rules to keep them from turning back off and then set a delay to change mode back to away and resume the rules by 3.5 hours. That timer starts when she unlocks the door. She's typically at my place for 3 hours. I also use the wifi app and have her connected to wifi when she's there, but it's not terribly reliable because her wifi turns off when her phone sleeps. I can share my rules when I get home if it would help you. If you want to set up a mode, you could just set it to run on the date when you leave and mode would change to away, it would instead change to cleaning mode and then change back to home upon your arrival on that day only. But you'd have to schedule it. Seems doable.

[EDIT] You'd have to be careful with that mode and pay attention to how your away and home modes work so that you don't inadvertently trigger away instead of maid mode. Might need some rules to adjust for that. This is one reason I chose to pause necessary rules and resume after a certain time. Too much to change or account for.

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Thanks for the advice. I guess the hard part Iā€™m trying to understand is if I have it pause all actions for several hours the system may miss some actions I send when the modes would normally change. For example, if she stays past sunset it could miss my ā€œEveningā€ mode switch which turns the outside lights on. Iā€™m sure I could build some sort of more complex rule to determine what mode to switch to once it comes out of Maid mode.

In pausing rules, you would only pause the ones that would control lights, etc. So, your modes would still be ok to run. I guess it depends on how your architecture is set up for your home. There isn't a wrong way. It's your way. So, we just need to figure out what's going to work best for you. The next paragraph I will lay out my system. Maybe this will help, maybe not. Maybe it'll give you a good laugh. Who knows. I tried to keep our lifestyle in mind when I configured my modes and lights rules. What works for us. This is how I have things set up.
Modes: quiet time - when one person is awake and the other is sleeping. (morning/evening)
Home - business as usual. Lights interact, some according to time, illuminance, sunset/sunrise, tv on or tv off.
Away - Both of us are gone presence based on life 360 and my cleaning lady has the wifi connected.
Night - both in bed. House off, night lights interact only.

I have three lights that trigger on/off to sunset and sunrise. The front lights, the lights over the cabinets, and the light in the entry way to the front of the house. - these also have separate rules of their own when interacting in the other modes when we're occupying these rooms.

My lights throughout the house that should turn off if rooms are not occupied will turn off in any mode. I have rules triggered by motion sensors based on movement in places like the kitchen/dining, living rooms, and bedrooms. I won't get into those rules because they get very complicated.

So when Sarah comes to clean, her code simply puts the house in home mode so HSM doesn't keep triggering that someone is in the house that shouldn't be, and I run a rule to pause the rules to keep the lights on and turn the lights on for her so that she doesn't have to. Keeping it simple. I just use the modes to represent Home, away, quiet time, and night time so that I can prevent lights and HSM from acting irregularly.

Here is the rule that I use for Sarah. It's not quite perfected because I've only been working on it when she comes. Every other week. Since I can see what works and what doesn't when she's here, I correct things and move on until the next visit.

[EDIT]
When I set up my house, I want it so that I don't have to ask alexa to turn something on or off and I don't want to have to push a button. Otherwise I could walk over and hit the switch. i want our house to interact with us. Without having to do anything to get the light on or off. Otherwise, what's the point of automation if you still have to do something to make something in your house happen. IMHO

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Thanks for all you help. I completely agree with your point about automation and just letting it work. I'm going to have to see if I can come up with a more automated trigger.

Here is what I came up with tonight for now - I have a bunch of Amazon buttons that I used with my Wink system. I hate for them to go to waste so I created a virtual lock on Hubitat and then a rule on Amazon to lock the virtual lock upon button press. When the virtual lock locks, it triggers the rule to pause actions for 8 hours while the maid is here. A little clunky, but its quick and so far reliable. I dont want to rely on the cloud for much but I figure this is not one used much and lets me recycle these buttons.

Do you know of a way to show how much time is left on the pause timer on a dashboard? I cant seem to find anything.

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There is not a way to see time remaining, but you could set up pushover to send you a notification when the switch is thrown. At least you could do the math and know when it started. You may be able to set up something using alexa or Google home to start a timer. I've never done it, but where there's a will, there's a way. Someone probably has. Or could help if it's possible.

I have a smartthings button that I use when I'm doing projects in the kitchen/dining to keep the lights on if I'm not moving much. That way I can just hit the button when I'm done and the rule will resume. I just programmed it as a single press button instead of a virtual anything. There is a built in in RM4 for a button action. I just used that. So press once (on) pause. Press once again (off) resume. I'm sure it'll work fine until you get more comfortable with the resources you have available in Hubitat. Tinkering is part of the habit. You'll transform things into what works for you over time. And as you learn from others your ideas will grow.

Thinking about your timer question again. You could theoretically set up a rule that will push a notification every hour until it un-pauses letting you know how much time was left. In theory. My initial thought would be that it would have to be pre-configured using delayed actions or a repeat function. I haven't looked for it, but I might be possible with a delay function or if there is a repeat function. You'd have to look.