Motion Lighting App Question

So Iā€™m looking to move all my rules over to the motion lighting app.

My only question is. How will this work? If I set it up where I push a button to turn off lights. Does this turn off the light automation as a whole?

No, as stated in the docs (accessible from the "?" icon in the upper right), the setting you appear to have chosen, "Buttons to turn off lights," is just way to manually turn off the lights before they would otherwise turn off due to motion inactivity plus the delay. It will not disable any portion of the lighting automation.*

If you do want to disable the automation as a whole for some reason, there are a few other ways to make that happen. The "buttons to disable on" or "switches to disable turning on" options are good candidates. (It's not clear to me whether these will still turn the lights off when motion is detected even if the motion lighting app didn't turn them on, but there are separate options for disabling "off" if needed as well as one that will let you toggle the activation of either/both settings.)

*This statement can be a bit misleading if you don't know how your motion sensor works. If the sensor is still "active" and you turn the lights off via this button or any other method, Motion Lighting--or any app using just this sensor's motion attribute becoming active--won't be able to turn the lights back on until the "timeout" on the sensor has elapsed and it goes inactive (i.e., before it will be able to report activity on its own again). This is often 30-60 seconds, though many Z-Wave sensors have the option to configure it for longer. I'm pretty sure I've seen some that will send repeated "active" events in a row even if they didn't go inactive first, but that delay is still often at least around 8 seconds and configurable up from there. Usuually not a problem since you probably wouldn't turn the lights off if you weren't leaving, but something to keep in mind if you wanted the automation to turn them back on rather soon after you manually turned them off and were just in that room.

Thanks, I'll review the docs too.

That makes sense. May not work exactly in my situation as I would want 5 minutes before the automation starts again.

Would creating a virtual switch, using that as "switch to disable on" in the motion lighting app, and then having another automation that turns that virtual switch off 5 minutes after it turns on work?

Something like this in Rule Machine (Rule 4.0) would work for that last thing:

TRIGGER: Virtual Switch turns *changed*

ACTIONS:
IF Virtual Switch switch is on
    Turn Virtual Switch off <-- delay 0:05:00 (cancel)
ELSE
    Cancel delayed actions
END-IF

Yep that would work.

Good point. I'll look into this.

Thanks for the help.

I have another question regarding the Motion Lighting App.

I have plenty a rooms throughout my house where if the light is on and there is no activity for 5 mins or less to turn off the light.

I've built these into RM. Can the motion lighting app do this? As far as I see it only handles turning on lights based of motion and back off when no motion.

Sure!

Sorry. I read over my message again.

What I mean is. I donā€™t want the light coming on based off motion. I only want the light going off if no activity and the light is on.

Oh, okay. I don't think that's possible. I've been trying to do the same with RM. "Trying"

This is how I do it in RM.

It will do this. You can disable turning on the lights with either a switch (virtual perhaps) or a button push. They will still turn off from motion inactive (unless that is disabled also).

Both from the On Options section of Motion Lighting.

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Yeah i guess i could use a virtual switch. id want this as a permanent solution. I would have to create virtual switches for every room...

maybe i'm being picky.

If all you want is a rule to turn off lights when motion is inactive, don't use Motion Lighting. Just make a little rule to do that.

I guess I'm missing the import of what you're trying to do... Or use Simple Lighting.

Yes this was added recently essentially it now has options for presence and or absence. I have it in presence (auto) during the day then absence (manual ON auto off) during sleep modes or when the blinds are closed. The blind has switch capabilities so I use this in the motion rule for disabling ON. That way when they blind is closed the room is essentially in sleep mode and the lights don't turn on when you move in bed :smile:. It's a very clever app now thanks to @bravenel

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OK, so I probably started everyone down the "virtual switch" path because I interpreted this as meaning you wanted to wait 5 minutes before after you "activate" something (say, turn on this virtual switch for some reason) before the Motion Lighting app would turn the lights on again. But then you said:

Is this all the time or just when some other condition (say, a virtual switch is turned on...not to go down that path again) is met?

Surely not if you never want any of them to turn on, as stated above? Then you could just use one virtual switch, always off, for all rooms (and have the option of turning it on if you change your mind and don't care that it affects all rooms). Or is this only sometimes and on a per-room basis?

In any case, if none of the suggestions above work (Simple Lighting or Motion Lighting with any of its numerous options configured, or Rule Machine with a custom rule--you'll almost certainly want community feedback or help on your rule if you're new to Hubitat), I'd suggest a giving more detail on exactly what you are trying to do.

Thanks for all the input.

Some of the suggestions have helped me understand more of the features available.

Iā€™m going to dig more into it.

I currently have simple rules to turn lights off like I described. I was just wondering if this could be all moved to motion lighting.

But do you have Hubitat Simple Lighting rules?:laughing:

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I haven't looked at that app in over a year. It's the simple solution I needed. Just thought I'd give you another option.

No. After reviewing my RM I realized I have other rules that control the booleans on those. So I canā€™t convert them over.

As for the other ones. Motion Lighting app seems to be working well!

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I have a question about the "Switches To Turn On Lights" feature. If I use this to turn on the lights, must I turn that switch off for the lights to go off and the rule to be re-enabled?

That depends on what else you might have the switch selected for. What this option means is to turn on the lights as if they were triggered by motion. All else will stay the same. If there is no motion that is going to go inactive (not in the room), then there wouldn't be anything to turn the lights off again. You could use the same switch for that by selecting that option as well, "Switches to Turn Off Lights".