Hebrew Mode

Jews and perhaps Muslims would fine Hubitat infinitely more useful if a Shabbat Mode could be defined. For observant jews, 18 minutes before sunset, Friday night, until approximately 45 minutes after sunset Saturday night, they are prohibited from manually controlling electric devices. It would be extremely useful if this control could be handled by Hubitat without human intervention.

In addition during the course of year various holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, and Succot also need this scheduling.

Any chance of such a mode being added to Hubitat?

This is something that could be done with some rules and one of the user calendar apps I think.

I just did a short read on the restrictions. What sort of devices are you interested in disabling? Do you wish to make it so smart switches will not activate the lights? That could actually be difficult because most of them operate without talking to the hub if you press the switch.

I saw mention of scheduled actions are OK but it sounds like automatic actions may not be, for example have a light on a timer may be OK, but having a light on a motion sensor would not be (similar to example I read of opening the fridge and the light comes on which is not allowed). The motion sensors could be stopped by using a virtual switch that when activated, disables whatever rule normally turns on the light from the motion.

Could you give some examples of what you would like to occur during Shabbat?

Built-in apps like Basic Rules, Thermostat Scheduler or Rule Machine can be configured to do pretty much whatever you want during specific hours or dates.

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For Jewish Holidays input from a calendar app is great. Fridays are always needed to activate the mode. A schedule of on and off actions throughout the 25 hour period would be universally used for all days designated in the mode. Some modifications for summer vs winter when days are shorter or longer would be desirable.

Lights go on for Friday night dinner or holiday dinner. Lights go off maybe at 11 PM. Bathroom lights may go on for the 25 hour period. Food Warming plate may go on or off.

The complicating factor is that this day starts 18 minutes before sunset and end 45 minutes after the next sunset.

Start by making a virtual switch, call it "Shabbat Mode" if you want.
For the Friday - Saturday part, use Rule Manager and make two rules, one to turn the switch ON at the proper time (you can use Sunset +/- an offset). Second rule to turn the switch back off. You could potentially combine it into one rule but making two separate rules is a little easier if you have not used Rule Machine much.

I use this app: [RELEASE] Google Calendar, Task, Reminder, and Gmail Search and Gmail Notification Device to trigger a No School switch for when kids don't have school. Assuming you have a Google Mail / Calendar account, you could use this app and then manually populate the extra days/times you want the Shabbat Mode activated in a google calendar, and have that app trigger the same switch.

There are other apps with calendar functions as well, that's just the one I am using.

Once you have the Switch in place, you can use that switch to do multiple things across all the other rule and automation apps.

  • Trigger rules to start running (ex timers of lights)
  • Restrict rules from running (ex appliances or lights that are not allowed during this time)
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Automation logic like this can be pretty easily created with Basic Rules, including the offsets based on sunsets.

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Yeah true Basic rules would probably work for most of it as well, instead of Rule Machine like I suggested. I used to use Basic rules but eventually just migrated all my rules to Rule Machine so it was all in one place under one app.

Let us know if you cannot figured it out, I am sure someone can whip up an example and post a screenshot.

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How do you create a virtual switch?

Devices > Add Device > Virtual

Not sure but this should help you [RELEASE] Sabbath/Holiday Mode Scheduler

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Nice find, I had never seen that anyone made a custom app for that. Should have done a search.

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You could use between two times sunset/sunrise with appropriate offsets (-18/+45).

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