Lights are turning off even when switch to disable is on

I guess you can actually assign them all to rooms now... as you can tell this is my first time actually trying out rooms.

I set most things up 2 years ago and have only lightly tinkered since. Finally today, with the doors of the laundry room blocking the hallway motions sensors and resulting in the lights turning off one too many times, I finally decided to rectify that problem. Didn't expect it to take me this long :frowning:

Okay, Room Lighting works with the force flag! After adding that option, I also had to check the Force box in the lighting periods page for all periods, but yeah, now it seems to be working well, and respecting the laundry switch.

Now to try to make sense of how to re-check motion after 15 minutes based on what you shared above. Seems complicated but I'll try... what are all the pieces you used there?

  1. Virtual motion sensor with auto inactive set for 5 seconds
  2. Motion zone controller combining virtual motion sensor with regular (in your case bathroom motion sensor) with activity timeout set for 15 seconds
  3. Basic Rule (probably, or Simple Automation, or other) Rule Machine rule that, in my case, says when laundry switch turns off, activate motion on virtual motion sensor
  4. Add motion zone controller to Room Lighting instead of individual motion sensors??

Edited: to change #3 to Rule Machine since other apps can't forcibly trigger motion

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I think I just found a simpler way of doing what you suggested:
Do #1 and #3 as suggested, but no need for a motion zone controller, and then just add the virtual motion sensor to the "Means to Turn Off Lights" in Room Lighting. Then, 5 seconds after the laundry switch is turned off, when the virtual motion sensor gets turned off, the hallway lights are turned off 1 minute after all motion is inactive (virtual and non-virtual).

Here's what my Room Lighting looks like now (I had to enable "Activate even if already partially Activated" under "Other Activation Options" to get the lights to always get turned on reliably):

And it seems to be working pretty well!

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Good point, inactivity on the virtual motion sensor is all that is really needed, and making use of it in the RL setup (or something similar) rather than including it in the Zone Motion Controller setup makes more sense.... I might look at doing this myself. Though I do like the simplicity of use the Zone Motion setup in terms of a single reference in RL.... Hmmm... I'll have to think it over some more....

Sure, fair enough. I haven't messed with zone motion enough to think about whether I like it, but seemed easier not to add more things. And then I could also explicitly make sure that the virtual motion sensor wasn't turning on the hallway lights when it was activated, only causing the hallway lights off condition to be triggered.

Okay, I think final question, and this might indeed require zone motion or something else: how would I set it up so that the first motion of the day would require both motion sensors to be triggered in order to turn on the lights, and only after that would the lights turn on when just one sensor detects motion? Basically, if going to the bathroom across the hall in the morning, which only one sensor will pick up motion for, don't turn on the lights, regardless of time. If both sensors pick up motion or it happens more than once (or N times), then turn on the lights.

That sounds like a question beyond my cognitive power at this time of night.... :slight_smile: You may want to look at the options in Zone Motion Controller, but I expect you could be right that it extends outside of that app.... You may need to look at options like Rule Machine and Hub Variables, etc.

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I thought I was done with this. But the lights are activating even though they’re not supposed to after 12:50am. Any ideas?

See logs below, which show lights activating at nighttime. When I turned on the Sleeping switch, they correctly didn’t turn on, but they’re not supposed to turn on because of the time. Or I’m still misunderstanding the Act/Off/Force part of time-based RL?

Here’s the time settings for RL:

Can you show the main screen from the RL setup? Wondering if the activation is not limited in the same way as the turning off....

So I see I can add a Limit “Between two times” which I haven’t, but then what’s the point of the Time Periods that I set? I assume I still don’t understand some nuance here.

Here’s what the full rule page looks like now, I think basically the same as last time I shared:

Any further thoughts here? Just walked around after 1am and the lights came on :disappointed:

Im running into an issue similar to this with lights enabling even though the mode and switch should be preventing this.

@sburke781 curious if you have any more ideas here. Sad that I don't understand why this isn't working reliably after 1am.

Warning.... Bit of a rambling train of thought ahead... :slight_smile:

Your last screenshot of the RM setup does seem odd.... It only talks about turning off the Lights..... No turning on.... Some random suggestions (which I don't expect to show anything new or definitive for me / us) would be to:

  • Make sure the logging option shown on the screenshot remains turned on
  • Review the logs for the App / devices involved

Separate to the RL setup, I would look at the "Light" devices involved, whether it be the specific lights or any "grouping" device that may be associated with the Lights, checking that they are not linked to other Rule Machine or similar automations. If they are, check whether those rules are impacting the Lights turning on.

The next, more unlikely straws I would suggest clutching, would be:

  • Confirming you are on the latest HE platform version (whether you choose to upgrade can depend on other factors, don't use this issue as the only factor...)
  • Try re-creating or at least saving the Room Lighting setup again, to see if more recent changes may take effect....

Beyond those suggestions I can only reach out to other Community members or HE staff, but would think it is worth at least checking some of the items above before reaching out to HE staff... Unless they interject in this conversation first :slight_smile:

To close the loop here, months later, after your last reply I went to look again and realized that either I misconfigured something in RL or a Hubitat / RL update changed something (probably the former). "Act" was enabled for Nighttime instead of just "Off". Fixed that and everything was dandy. Should have posted a screenshot of that page here, where it would have been obvious...

I've since moved homes and all those automations are now moot :frowning: but at least I learned a bunch! Way more halogen in the new home, so Inovelli Blues aren't seemingly working in some high-load places and I can't automate much yet, lighting-wise.

Thanks. I figured this out, as noted above.

Edit: was the above written by ChatGPT?

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