I have an exterior light automation that is sunset + 180 minutes to turn off which is good in winter but too late in summer. Is there a better automation?
Depending on how you have your automation set up, you could add a second trigger to it for the latest time you'd want to turn off the lights.
Just one of the reasons that I like Daylight Savings Time.
You could create a RM rule that has two conditional actions in it. For the first, add a condition for the Fall and Winter months, and for the second conditional action, add a condition for the Spring and Summer months.
You can have both conditional actions in one rule, with just a single trigger which would still be Sunset with no offset. Sunset + offset would be one of the two conditions for each of your conditional actions. Just make sure each conditional action in the rule has the following structure:
IF (conditions)
Then (actions)
End-IF
I use sunset with daylight savings settings to turn my porch lights on, they stay on till 10PM regardless of the time of year.
I played with using a luminance sensor, using when it got to 0 to start a 2 hour timer to shut off, but I have a few neighbors who have some bright lights that randomly come on and it would throw it off.
I assume that’s exactly what it’s doing. But that means the lights turn off a few hours later in the summer than in the winter. Later than what the OP is looking for.
I agree with @OldChicagoPete that adding to the rule trigger or conditions could help.
I have an evening time automation that is triggered either by sunset (in the winter) or around 5:30pm (in the summer).
What would probably be most helpful is if @user897 could share a screenshot of the rule, and also let us know what is the latest time the lights should shut off in the summer.
Here is a driver that tracks meteorological seasons. You could use it in rule machine to auto-set your off time for Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Not precise by the day but maybe simple and good enough. [RELEASE] Meteorological Seasons driver
