First a quick look at my living room environment:
Philips Hue Bulbs paired with the Hue Bridge
Philips Hue Dimmer switch paired with the Hue Bridge and configured for the room which the lights above have been added to
Philips Hue Motion Sensor paired with HE
Philips Hue Bridge linked with HE
I have a motion lighting rule which will turn on the living room lights if the lux level is low enough and motion is detected. I had this working until I pushed the off button on the dimmer switch to turn off the lights. After that I've been unable to get the motion lighting rule to turn on the lights again. The event log for the motion lighting rule shows nothing at all, but looking in the event log for the sensor I can see that the motion lighting rule should have triggered as the lux level is below my set level and motion has been detected.
Can someone please tell me what I need to change for the motion lighting rule to trigger the lights to come on even if the dimmer switch has been used? I do want to be able to use both the dimmer switch and the motion lighting rule to control the lights.
I used to have the motion sensor added to the Hue bridge as well and then I could control the lights with both the motion sensor and the dimmer switch without one disrupting the other.
I'm sorry, I didn't make that clear in the initial post. The dimmer switch is configured to control the group, not the individual lights. I'll edit the original post to reflect this.
I've found some strange behaviour with this. So after I posted this yesterday I gave up and went to bed. When the motion sensor was triggered during the night, the lights came on just fine.
And then this afternoon, the lights came on just fine again once the lux level became low enough. But as soon as I use the dimmer switch to turn the lights off, I cannot get motion lighting to turn on the lights again (this is under "evening" mode). To me, this seems like very strange behaviour.
If you are turning them off by some means other than the app, the app could possibly think they are on, and hence not turn them on. Motion Lighting as options for turning off the lights with buttons and switches, and if you select these options, it should work correctly.
But I wouldn't be able to do that while the dimmer switch is connected to the Hue Bridge rather than HE, right?
How can I determine if the app thinks the lights are already on? Set the light up in a dashboard?
So, as I said above, the lights came on as they should in the evening but when I then used the off button on the dimmer switch to turn them off, they wouldn't come on again when triggered by motion. Then this morning, much like during the night yesterday, the lights come on automatically first thing. It's almost like there is a time delay which resets it and it then works again.
So after the lights came on this morning (this was still in night mode) I turned them off with the button to see if I would have the same issue during night mode to trigger the lights by motion. And yes, that is correct. Once the lights have been turned off with the button, they won't come on again automatically.
I was then thinking that maybe it's the change of modes that makes the automation kick in and work again. So when I got to work I rang my wife to see if she had had to turn on the lights with the button or if they had come on by themselves (in day mode now). Sadly, she reported she had had to turn them on manually. I'll see if I can do some further testing with this tonight but at this point it almost looks like there is a time delay from that the button is pushed to turn off the lights until the automation again can turn them on.
I also had issues with another light which I have never had issues with at all before. I've got a light in the cloak room which is only controlled by a motion sensor. The light is connected to the Hue Bridge but the sensor is connected to HE. It is using motion lighting as well to turn on and off, but a very basic set of rules. Turn on when motion is detected and then delay off by 1 minute. Last night I noticed the light didn't turn off so I turned it off (the room that is, which is what the motion sensor also controls) using the Hue App on my phone. This morning, the light won't come on again. The issue with this light not coming back on again might be because the same issue as I'm having with the living room lights, but I have no idea why the lights wouldn't turn off to begin with.
@bravenel is correct in that when the lights are turned off by the dimmer switch, the motion lighting app still thinks the lights are on (most of the times at least, I've seen occassions where it properly detected the lights were turned off). When the app hasn't detected that the lights are off, it will not turn the lights back on again until after the app thinks it has turned the lights off again, which will occur after the last motion was detected in the room.
Example:
You have your delay off set to 15 minutes which means the lights won't turn off until 15 minutes after motion was last detected.
At 10:00 the lights are turned off using the off button on the dimmer switch. You continue walking around the area but the lights will now not turn back on again since the motion lighting app still thinks that the lights are on. At 10:05 you leave the area and no motion is detected anymore. At 10:20 the Motion Lighting app will turn off the lights and it's after this point that the lights can again be triggered by a motion event
Likewise, if you turn on the lights using the dimmer switch without triggering the Motion Lighting app, the lights will stay on until they are turned off manually. But if you manully turn on the lights and the Motion Lighting app then is triggered by motion, the Motion Lighting app will turn off the lights according to the rules in the app.
I don't know about you, but this was a good exercise for me to go through to understand how the motion lighting app works and what the limitations of the app are.
As I said earlier, this feature is easily dealt with. Select the dimmer switch in the app as a switch to turn off the lights. That way, the app will know the proper state of the lights even when turn off manually.
Yes, but that can only be done if the dimmer switch is known to HE. In this case the dimmer switch is connected to the Hue Bridge, not HE, and as such, it is not visible to HE.
Coming back to this for clarity, particularly with the new changes to how everything works.
I have a single motion detector controlling a single smart light switch in our kids bathroom. KidsMotion and KidsBathLight. When KidsMotion is activated, KidsBathLight is turned on.
In the rule, I select "KidsBathLight" as the dimmer to turn on. Should I also set it in the "Turn on Switches" option?
Similarly, do I add the same dimmer/switch in the "Options for turn on, disable and enable lights on"?
I presume I should leave the "Options for Additional Sensors LIghts On/Off options" alone?
Seems like there's a lot of ways to include the same switch. Just want to make sure I'm setting things properly for the physical switch to not mess up the Motion Lighting rules,
I’m having a similar issue and this ‘fix’ causes it’s own set of issues. In my case, I have a Lutron dimmer controlled by Lutron occupancy sensors via Motion Lighting. When I originally set up Motion Lighting, if I turned the dimmer on and then off from HomeKit or from the wall while motion was not active, such as during a mode when Motion Lighting is not active, then the next time I would activate motion, the light wouldn’t turn on because the Motion Lighting app thought the light was already on. By default, it seems the Motion Lighting app does not recognize when a dimmer it controls turns off, which makes no sense to me. I read the docs and ended up adding the dimmer to the “Switches to turn off lights” config of the Motion Lighting app. That made it so the app now recognizes that the light is off even when turned off from HomeKit, but I shouldn’t have to do that, and also, doing this causes the Motion Lighting app to redundantly double turn off the dimmer each time motion goes inactive or even if the dimmer is turned off from HomeKit when motion isn’t active. Not sure if that’s a bug or what. I can post config and log screenshots if needed.
Well, understood what your issue is. I will look into two things: (1) why ML can't do a better job at knowing a light is off, and (2) how to not send double offs.
I want Motion Lighting to control my "Closet Lights" (a Lutron dimmer switch) via motion, but I also want to be able to turn off the lights from the physical switch, or from HomeKit, or from Alexa. Pretty simple ask I thought, but not so much. I first had the issue of Motion Lighting not turning the lights on if I had turned them off via other means because it thought the light was still on. Okay, makes since I guess (although I would argue Motion Lighting should by default subscribe to off events of any lights it controls so it knows), so I added "Closet Lights" to the "Switches to turn off lights" setting. That worked in the sense that Motion Lighting now knows the proper state of the lights and always turns them on when it should now, but it caused a side effect of Motion Lighting sending an additional off command to "Closet Lights" each time they are turned off, whether it's Motion Lighting turning them off due to motion inactive or me turning them off via HomeKit. Practically, there is no consequence to this, but the extra redundant off command bothers me because it's just unnecessary, and plus it is polluting the airwaves with an additional Lutron RF off signal that doesn't need to be sent.
My questions are:
Why does it do that? Is it a bug?
Is there a way to make it stop? Is my rule just configured wrong?
Here's screenshots of the rule config and the rule in action showing the redundant off command.
Duplicate post above, moved here to consolidate. See response above.
This is happening to me as well. We have a 100% automated house with multiple motion detectors in each room. Any room that has movement when the mode changes, the lights will not work until everyone leaves that room and the light-off after x minutes of no motion has a chance to fully play out.
This will also occur if I'm in a room with motion detectors and I ask Google to turn the lights off. The lights will not turn back on automatically until the room is left alone and the detectors aren't triggered for the set time.
I realize this thread is a year old, but I'd love to know if anything was ever done about this.
With a year old thread, please be more specific as to what is happening, and show the Motion Lighting setup page you are using.
Sure! I've included my hallway as an example. I'm still pretty new to the platform so I'd love to hear if I could be doing anything better / differently.
A few examples based on this area:
If I'm in the hallway and I ask it to turn off the lights, leaving and re-entering the hallway will not turn the lights back on. The lights will not turn back on until people stay out of the hallway until the "off delay" expires without either of the motion detectors selected being triggered.
If I'm in the hallway when the mode changes from Day to Night, the Night Scene will not trigger until we've been out of the hallway for the full "off delay" duration without triggering a motion detector.
Turn on logging for this one, and make it fail one of the ways you describe. Then post a screenshot of the logs here for that ML app. It will tell you why it is not turning on.
