Finally trying to tackle Rule Machine instead of Simple Lighting to take advantage of broader restrictions and conditions, but I'm not quite understanding how the restrictions work.
I'd like to use my Harmony Remote state to restrict whether or not my basement lights turn on when the basement door opens.
The Harmony has 4 " child switches" for its actions. Watching Roku, Watching Shield, Watching Oppo, and Watching Bluray.
I had a Simple Lighting rule that turned on the basement lights when the basement door opened, but I'd like to add the restriction that if any of those switches are on, don't turn on the light.
I don't understand the difference between "If any of these switches are on" and "If all of these switches are off" - combined with the "not this condition" toggle.
Your basement door is going to be the trigger.
Then you need to make a conditional If Statement, if door open and the four switches are off.
Then turn on basement lights.
This might help, too. I have a different trigger: If I decide to watch Fire TV, Apple TV, or a BluRay then I want one scene. If I'm not watching anything, or I'm watching cable, I want a different scene. So I trigger off of any of the Harmony switches changing. I also want this to only happen if the mode is Evening, so the first action exits the rule if the mode is something else.
this seems to be working. thanks for the help! I had not built any If-Then rules before, and I wasn't adding the trigger to part of the conditions. Too much time spent in Simple Lighting!
Tremendously helpful!! I need to work my way up to that, but I definitely have plans for lighting for watching sports vs lighting for watching movies. Thank you!
This looks like it should work fine. Just a couple of suggestions...
Because your trigger is "Basement Door open," you don't really need to have that condition as part of your IF statement. The rule will never run unless the basement door opens, so including it in the IF is redundant. If you want to do something different if the basement door is closed, then you would want to change your trigger to "Basement Door changed." In that case, you do need to specify the door being open or closed in your IF statement.
Also, you should always close your IF with an END-IF. It's not absolutely required if there are not other statements following the IF. But it is best practice. And as you build more complex rules, you'll find it really helpful to get in the habit of always including an END-IF.
Oddly, the rule wasn't working properly before I added it into the IF statement. But I may have had something else wrong that I fixed at the same time. I'm not good at only changing one thing at a time. Terrible habit, bad for learning, but I am always looking to speed things up. Time to slow down and learn the right way.
Will definitely add the "End-If" and try to get in the habit.
Thanks again for your help. Thanks from the wife, too. In the process of making this work, I explained what I was doing to the missus. She was pissed because opening the basement door and blinding me with light was her way of telling me to turn the volume down. And that got me thinking.....
I've got some LED lights behind my screen doing nothing. So I told her that I could make the LED lights flash instead of the lights turning on. And that got me thinking.... So now I'm creating a virtual switch for Google Home to utilize. Lets call it the "Its too damn loud" switch. She can say "Hey Google, the basement is too loud" and trigger the LEDs to pulsate RED to get my attention. Now she wont even need to come down from the bedroom to open the basement door. I might even give her a zigbee button for her nightstand to do the same thing.
Yay, happy wife! Made it even easier for her to yell at me.
eta: I don't know that there's one particular "right way" to do something. If you look at many of the threads in the forum, there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat. I'm pretty bad about changing multiple things at once, too.
