I had a basic rule to turn on the outdoor lights at sunset and off at sunrise.
Every year it turns on during Halloween and kids show up for candy. Rather than manually pausing and unpausing the rule, I was hoping to add an exception so it runs every day EXCEPT October 31st.
I didnāt see a way to do this in Basic Rules, so I tried to build it in Rule Machine but am having issues getting it to work.
Is there an easier way to accomplish this?
Turn on lights at sunset
Turn off lights at sunrise
(Every day of the year EXCEPT Halloween)
Set up a required expression of November 1 to October 30. This would make October 31 as false for the required expression and prevent the rule from running.
Does this look right? How would I get the light to turn off at sunset? In Basic Rules, I see an inverse option to turn it off at sunrise, but I don't see that in RM. I don't have to create a separate rule, do I?
The required expression would work. As for your rule, it would be:
Triggers: Sunset; Sunrise (two separate triggers)
Actions: If sunset, dim front outside lights: 25
Else, turn off lights
End-If
Basically, you would want to define a conditional action (If-then) with two triggers. Sunset will turn on the lights, sunrise will turn off the lights. The required expression prevents the lights from running on October 31.
