My basement Hue motion sensor turns on my basement light switch just fine and turns it back off after 5 minutes if no motion detected.
What I would like to do is if I enter the basement, and the light switch turns on via the motion sensor, and I plan to stay for a while, I would like to manually turn the light on again, even though already on, in order to disable the motion sensor turning it off, as sometimes I'm in there long enough, and out of range of the motion sensor, and the light switch turns off after 5 minutes and I'd like it to stay on.
Is this the purpose of Motion Lighting "Switch to disable off"? Does that work after the fact when the motion sensor already turned it on and I turn it on "again" so the motion sensor does not turn it off?
A better way to do this sort of thing? I did not have much luck using the RM trying to do this.
I have/had the exact same issue with my basement lights.
You can use the "Switch to Disable Off" setting for this. I don't think you can use the same switch to disable off as the one you are controlling, at least not exactly so.
What I did was use double taps of my Zwave switch, the same switch that operates the basement light. So double tap up is disable Motion Lighting, and double tap down resumes ML. First I created a Virtual switch. Then I had to make a Simple Automation to flip the virtual switch on when double tapped up, and a second SA to turn the virtual switch off when double tapped down. Then I could use the Virtual Switch in my Motion Lighting. This basically is translating a button press (that is how double tap looks to the hub) to a switch.
Single tap is just normal on and off, or temporary override of ML, so nothing changes there.
If your switches don't have double tap, you could use a button device like a Pico, or a dashboard button you create.
Use the Switch to Disable Off as mentioned...There are a couple of 'hacks' I guess, where you could either use a smart switch to disable or a button push that enables/disables a virtual switch, or another smart device to trigger a virtual switch.
I have my TV as a switch that disables motion, although what I have found is that if motion is inactive and you turn the switch off to enable motion lighting again unless the motion device becomes active again the light doesn't go off, as the trigger is the motion becoming inactive and that's already happened. so I had to setup another rule in rule machine to counter this issue. It's not pretty, but I couldn't figure out anyway....so if you do let me know.
I found that "Switch to Disable Off" using the basement switch itself did no good. Perhaps that was because I also found out that this older GE Gen1 switch does not report so I ordered a new Zooz switch that will report, and will try this again, or try with the RM and a variable that tracks if turned on physically vs. digitally. Meanwhile I just leave it on for 10 minutes and hope I've finished why I went into the basement, or will wave at the motion sensor if it turns off...
Are you saying one rule can pause another rule so that a physical ON could pause a motion on/off rule until a physical OFF? I edited one of my rules and did not see where there was an action to pause another rule. Doing a search it seems there is a rule pause action but I cannot find it. Even so, this strategy and the one I suggested above, setting variables, may not work if the switch does not report a physical ON event if the motion sensor already turned it on.
Perhaps the HE folks can tweak the logic somehow?
I'm not interested in a virtual or second switch where I'd have to take out my phone and turn the virtual or second switch on in order to stop the motion OFF event.
Yeah you can pause a Rule Machine rule but not motion lighting or other apps. Some other people may be better to help as I am not familiar with the,switch you have
This took longer than I thought since there was a delay in shipping from Amazon, and I had so many other things to do, but now am glad to report that I have this working similar to how @neonturbo did his setup. I got a new Zooz ZW+ switch that has worked well. It reports Button 1 and Button 2 events that I took great advantage of. I could not get the effect I wanted using the "Motion Lighting Apps" app so I am doing this just with the Rule Machine. I have 4 rules to get the desired behavior I wanted -
Basement Lights On - turns the lights on via the motion sensor going active. Also, it does a 'Cancel Timed Actions: Basement Lights Off' so that the lights are not turned off prematurely from a previous sensor inactive, or from the motion sensor going inactive from a run of the rule before I pushed button 1 when wanting to disable the rule. Without this, the lights would sometimes go off early, or go off even though I pushed button 1 to disable the rule.
Basement Lights Off - turns the lights off when the motion sensor goes inactive w/ a 2 minute delay.
Basement Lights Button 1 pushed - triggered by the Button 1 push on the Zooz which then pauses the 'Basement Lights Off' rule. This allows me to stay anywhere in the basement outside of the range of the motion detector, merely by pushing the Zooz switch top button same as turning it on physically.
Basement Lights button 2 pushed - triggered by the Button 2 push on the Zooz which resumes the 'Basement Lights Off' rule. This must be pushed when leaving the basement else the lights will stay on. Has the added benefit that it turns the lights off right away and there is time to walk out the door before the motion sensor allows an active state again.
I did not have any luck trying to perform an action via a 'switch physical on' trigger which I did not get if the motion sensor already did a digital on so am glad the button events were still delivered when the switch was on.
Dave
P.S. Perhaps the "Motion Lighting Apps" app could be enhanced to suspend the motion going inactive using the button 1 and 2 trick as well. I tried to have the motion app suspend based on the same switch and that did not work unfortunately, and did not want to use yet another switch to disable the motion detector.
Will report back what I find...
