Combine open and close notification from contact sensor if they happen back to back

📐 Rule Machine®
1

Currently, I have my Hubitat sending me a notification when a contact sensor on a door is open and when it is closed. The problem is, I get constant back to back notifications every time the door is open and then immediately closed.

What I would like to do is have a single notification go out letting me know the door was opened and then closed if the open and closed event happen within a 5 second period of time, otherwise, I would like to get notifications from both individual events.

I know there are probably several ways to tackle this problem, but what is the simplest way to go about it?

Update: I got it working. This is how I did it

  1. I created a boolean Hub Variable 'FrontDoorOpen' and gave it a connector type of switch.
  2. I created a Front Door Opened rule that triggers when the contact sensor is open and sets the FrontDoorOpen variable to true.
  3. I created a Front Door Opened Notification rule that triggers when the FrontDoorOpen variable has been set to true for 5 seconds and then sends me a notification that the front door was opened. It then sets the FrontDoorOpen variable to false.
  4. I created a Front Door Closed rule that triggers when the contact sensor is closed. It then either sends me a front door was opened and then closed notification if the FrontDoorOpen variable is set to true or just a front door was closed notification if the FrontDoorOpen variable is set to false. It then sets the FrontDoorOpen variable to false.

I wish there was a way to put multiple rules in a group and treat them as a set.

2

What are you using now? The Notifications app? If so, many binary sensor options have a "for how long?" option you can fill in, though I haven't tested a contact sensor specifically...

Rule Machine, of course, can also do this, just a bit more work to set the whole thing up.

3

Here's an option that should work in one rule

Trigger Events
Front Door contact opened

Actions to Run
Wait for elapsed time: --> 0:00:05
IF (Front Door contact is open) THEN
    Notify 'Front Door is opened'
    Wait for event: Front Door contact closed
    Notify 'Front Door is closed'
ELSE
    Notify 'Front Door was opened and closed'
END IF
3 Likes
4

Wow, this is great. I haven't dug too deep into the functionality of the Rule Machine yet. This example will help me consolidate a bunch of my rules.

5

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