My motion lighting needs to run Sunset to Sunrise OR if the curtain shade is closed. It might seem obvious but if you close a blackout blind or curtain at mid day, it's dark. The position of the curtain/blind/shade affects the need for lighting. I need to be able to have the motion lighting still work outside of the Sunrise, Sunset times when the curtain is closed.
The issue. Curtains open at 8AM unless opened manually, basically because I don't want to wander into the front room and flash my wanger to to the neighbours or anyone passing by! If sunrise is before 8AM my motion lighting app has stopped and I'm wandering around in the dark.
I realise most people will use battery operated multi sensors and monitor luminance - I use the PIRs on my alarm system via MQTT. I can use RM but it is noticeably slower to bring the lights on.
Sorry, I must admit I don’t completely understand what you are asking but I assume that’s because I haven’t really used motion lighting much myself so apologies if my response doesn’t make sense for some reason.
I may be wrong but if memory serves motion lighting allowed you to also add a specific switch state to trigger or disregard the motion lighting rule. If so, have you considered using a Boolean variable linked to the curtain state as a virtual switch?
It would require creating a small separate rule so open curtains = light on and closed curtains = light off but if this is even an actual feature maybe it could solve your problem in the short term while waiting for your suggestion to be considered?
It's self explanatory Sunset to Sunrise OR Curtain Open, the ML rule is active. Outside of those conditions the ML rule doesn't run.
I don't want half a dozen rules and variables to switch one light on. I'd like an option to consider the big window covering to be taken into consideration in a lighting rule as it affects the lighting!
Apologies for the sarcasm but if I hear another "break this down into 3 rules and switch 4 variables" I'll scream. There are multiple options in ML that can be used but not one that considers the one thing that affects the light in the room more than any other...
Shortly after posting I remembered your other thread and realized my mistake. Sorry man, it’s 100% my fault for trying to post at 4am when I am half awake because I’m having trouble sleeping.
At the risk of you wanting to murder me even more I’d like to summarize what I’m reading to make sure I got it right. Please feel free to ignore this post if you are over me right now though!
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At 8am, if your curtains are closed they will auto open for you. Ultimately though, you simply want the lights to turn on if it’s dark outside (sunset to sunrise) or any time curtain is closed.
Ideally you’d like to do this all in the Motion Lighting App or in as few separate rules possible.
Assuming I finally understood correctly then I can’t find a simple way to make that happen all within the Motion Lighting app either.
If I was personally trying to solve this by trying to introduce the least amount of stuff possible though then I guess I would create a single rule and a single variable to keep track if the room is dark (switch off) or not (switch on) - based on either the shades or time.
Then regardless the time of day any motion is detected, your motion lighting rule only triggers if the room is dark (switch off) otherwise it just assumes the shades are open or it’s daytime so it doesn’t need to trigger at all.
So you take the timing out of ML and put it in a rule that flips a Boolean Hub Variable to enable/disable lights on in the ML instance. That rule could be triggered by any of Sunset, Sunrise or the shade changing. It has a single Conditional Action that tests Between Sunset and Sunrise OR shade is closed, and sets the variable true or false depending on IF-THEN or ELSE.
Thanks. I'll try that at some point, I'm already using a variable in the rule for physical switch that I was harping on about yesterday.
This rule just moved to the bottom of a priority list as I've had a couple of actions fail on several rules today that have been working without issue for 6 months or more. I'm trying to work out what happened but it seems the logs don't work on any of my RM child apps as there are no events in them and the past logs page shows nothing not even the rule title until after I rebooted the hub but still no history. I seem to be just hopping from one issue to another....
Just looked at this again. From the ML app the option is:
"Boolean variables to disable turning on when true"
So it looks to be the opposite of your rule that I need, otherwise the curtain closing and sunset to sunrise period will make the boolean true and disable rather than enable the ML.
I've set the boolean (diningLight) to false between sunset sunrise or curtain closed so the ML will work and also used another (diningPhysical) that is triggered from two rules (switch on or dimmer changed = true, switch off = false).
It works a treat, I got there in the end - 1 ML rule, 3 RM rules and 2 variables. God help me when I start trying modes!
