In the Room Lighting app in the drop-down "Motion Sensors that become active" are these automatically aggregated - any motion sensor active activates the light? Is it best not to select motion zones from the list?
Yes. Thats exactly how it works!
I've not used motion Zones, so I can't answer that.
S.
I use Zone Motion app and have been very content with it's function. If I'm reading your question correctly, 'best not to select from list...' my virtual zones are not in the room drop down but are easily located in the triggers... Here's two small captures - the first is just 2 real devices paired together in 'ZM -Kitchen'.
Here is the RL for the kitchen. the "Devices to Automate" doesn't offer the ZM -Kitchen but the Means to Activate and turn off both cleanly offer. This works really well for me to protect against fails positives as someone walks the hall past the kitchen etc.
@jshimota ....I believe you could have selected your 2 motion sensors in Room Lighting under Means to Activate. I don't believe you needed to use the Zone Motion app. For instance, I found this under the Room Lighting topic....[NEW APP] Room Lighting - #372 by bravenel
There is always more than one way to achieve the intended results, but I believe Room Lighting can achieve what you want to do with 2 motion sensors.
@jshimota: Zone Motion is not needed for this sort of automation. Zone Motion is misleading to many users. Its purpose was to reduce false positives in a motion noisy environment, such as outside. Its ancillary capability of collecting multiple motion sensors into a single virtual sensor is entirely redundant for all of the built-in apps that use motion sensors, including Room Lighting, Basic Rules, Rule Machine, and Simple Automation Rules. In fact, Zone Motion is actually less efficient than just selecting motion sensors directly in the apps, because it introduces an extra virtual motion sensor, and the processing time for an extra event in the event queue for every motion activation situation, not to mention an extra unnecessary app that has to load..
We considered removing Zone Motion entirely due to these misunderstandings.
thank you. I always stayed away from RL as my initial use was troubled and relied on rules. Now, I'm more comfortable (not completely) with RL and I guess I could rip out the ZM to save... I'm not sure what. memory? 1 less app? I've got 50 virtual devices - so it's not about efficiency! I'll leave well enough alone - I have trust issues with my hub it's just me.
FWIW I've been trying out Senor Groups+ (Sensor Groups+ [Resurrected]) to aggregate multiple sensors into a single sensor for sharing across hub mesh, and to make my rules a little easier to read.
It doesn't change anything that @bravenel pointed out, but in my case, I find the easier reading of my own rules worth the offsetting costs!
Having said that, in a config like mine where all the motion sensors are on one hub, and the rules are running elsewhere, it (in my head at least) reduces the message traffic down to just one virtual device for each group of sensors, as long as I'm not also sharing the source sensors as well.
Of course a shared variable or connector could do the same thing with less overhead I expect!
S.