Random delay in RM - How does it work?

I'm trying to learn how RM 3.0 works, and so far I have had some success, but I'm trying to understand how the random delay option works for a Delay Action?

A couple examples of what I'm wanting to do. First, when motion is detected at the front door, I want to delay turning on the lamp at the front door to make it appear as though someone got up and checked the front door, and to keep it from being predictable and easily figured out to be automation, I wanted to have a random delay for when the lamp would turn on, so presently I have a delay of 25 seconds set on the lamp to turn on once motion is detected, so if I tell it have a random delay, would it turn on randomly anywhere between 1 and 25 seconds, or how should I understand the impact of turning on that option for that action?

Secondly, I want the kitchen lights to stay on until a predetermined time, and then shut of when going to bed, but when traveling and away from the house, I would like to add a random delay to that so that it would turn off randomly within 20 minutes. So let's say I wanted the lights to turn off at 10 PM, but randomly at that time, if I added a delay of 20 minutes, would it randomly turn off between 10:00 PM and 10:20 PM then?

If someone wouldn't mind helping me understand this random delay is defined and works, then I think I will better understand how to use it in my rules. :slight_smile:

Thanks so much!

If you set a random delay for amount x, the actual delay will be random between 0 and x.

Suppose you want something to happen randomly between 4 minutes after some event and 10 minutes after the event. You would have a fixed delay of 4 minutes followed by a random delay of 6 minutes.

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Ok, that was what I was expecting to hear, but at least now I have a baseline for what to expect. Thanks for your time and help! :slight_smile:

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