I'm new to HE. Can someone tell me if I'm doing this right. I'm trying to turn a set of lights on automatically with motion, then off if no activity in the same motion sensor.
I'm trying to do this with a single rule and only between sunset and sunrise.
Can someone confirm I'm doing this right? Also, in the 'options for additional sensors' section what does 'additional motion sensors to keep on' mean?
Looks OK at a quick glance. But if you are asking it must be because it isn't working as expected?
The "additional motion sensors to keep on" allows you to add additional motion sensors to the room. If any of them are registering motion they will keep the lights on. For instance, my basement lights are triggered by the motion sensor at the bottom of the stairs. But the delay timer will be reset if any other motion sensor in the basement detects motion. You can also do this by creating a motion zone controller, though it works slightly differently.
I would think using "Motion Lighting" rule is designed for this. That will turn on with motion, and off in the absence of motion. You select the motion sensors involved, or you can create a "motion zone", which is another app, if you'd like that approach, but it is not necessary.
As I can tell this is working correctly for now, I will monitor to make sure, but thanks for the confirmation..i'll continue to monitor
Excellent. Your rule looks fine. And, if you're getting the desired result, well, that's the point, so Congrats!
The additional, "keep lights on..."
Let's say you have two motion sensors in an area. If you want one of them to trigger the lights on but both must report "no motion" in order for the lights to turn off. This is where you'd add the second sensor. Only the first one would turn them on but it takes both before they go off. I have such a situation in my kitchen. In my case, the second sensor is in such a location it would pick up movement outside the kitchen, so I don't want it turning the kitchen light on. But it is needed to cover an area obscured from the first so, to cover the entire kitchen, both must show inactive before the lights go off.
I hope this helps.
I'm having some inconsistency with one of my motion lighting rules. See the rule below. For some reason the rule was kicking off this morning just fine. However, when we were in the bathroom and it was dark it was not kicking on. Also see the motion sensor activity and then the RM log showing the gap of time when there clearly was activity.
As another followup, that may give some clues, the same thing happened this morning:
at 530am lights were triggered on by ML
AT 533am, I turned the lights off with my hue dimmer switch
at 551am active was triggered and inactive was triggered
rm did not kick off
perhaps ML did not trigger again, because it thought the lights were still on, due to the fact that I turned them off with the hue dimmer switch.
Is there a way for motion lighting to detect the current state of one or a group of bulbs to signal whether it should kick off?
I'll offer my thoughts.
It looks like at 5:01 AM your motion sensors should turn on the lights and after 30 minutes of inactivity turn off the lights. I see numerous lights. I'm not sure if these are bulbs or switches, and that may not even matter. What MIGHT be, is turning one of these on may not be seen by the rule and why it didn't work the way you'd like. One possible solution may be to group all those lights into a single group. Then use that group rather than all the individual lights in your rule. That may then be seen as if any are on. Secondly, I believe I have seen a button or toggle in either RM or Motion Lighting, one of them somewhere to tell the rule "if one is on, consider them all on". or something like that. That too may help the rule know lights are on.
Other, much more savvy members may have to offer deeper help for both this and your other post concerning these similar issues.
For what it's worth, here is my Simple Rule for turning off lights that were turned on either by Alexa or manually via the switch. This has been consistent and stable for me...
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