[Deprecated] At Home Simulator

Nice catch! App has been updated

Hi,

I'm new to Hubitat and am trying to get used to the programming paradigm. As you describe I'm using a single virtual control switch to control the overall use of AHS and am using a pair of Rule Machine rules to turn AHS's control switch on early and then back off at the end of day. As with everyone else I occasionally need to be able to exclude areas from AHS. So I'd planned to define room level "kill" switches as you describe.

I was looking for a kill switch in the AHS parent or child such as your post here. I'm probably just screwing up but cannot find the child-app-specific kill switch described here in either the AHS parent or child. I don't seem find an input entry at all below the General bar except the logEnable entry.

Has this AHS child-specific kill been removed from later versions of AHS? (I'm using your GitHub Oct 10th drop).

Thanks!

Hi, there has never been a way to exclude rooms from a routine at will. If room by room control is needed you would have to setup a different child app per room.

Yes, Hubitat now allows you to pause/unpause any app at will right from the app interface. So there was no need to have the extra code in each app.

Thanks and welcome to Hubitat!

Thanks for the quick reply!

I already have a different AHS child app per room. I had to do that anyway to randomize the different rooms such that some nights one room's lights are the first ones to on or off and another a different room's lights are the first to go on or off.

I didn't see any way to do that with the Group number concept in AHS. I could be wrong, but if I understand AHS properly It looked like anything in Group 1 would always come on before anything came on in Group 2. I didn't see any way to randomize devices in the same group number.

With different child apps and large initial randomization settings, that effect can happen without having to manually move devices around within the child app.

My goal, though, is to have a single "kill all automation" switch for a given room; not only AHS, but any scenes, SimpleLighting schedules, etc. That way if I have guests stay in a guest bedroom or am hosting a party in the great room, all I have to do is turn just that room's single participate-in-automation virtual switch off. Your Jan. 15th reply to Doug / developer made it sound like that was possible within a particular child AHS app.

As I understand it so far, the alternative you're suggesting would require me to either have to track down every child app / rule that involves that room's devices and manually pause them or else to have to manage two different RM rules for each room that triggered off that single room's kill switch instead of a master Enable AHS Automation control virtual switch I'm using at this point.

:+1:

Very true, as stated multiple times... 'This is not a random lights generator.' :wink:

But, as one user figured out... if you only fill in the Random Lights section it can be used that way! lol

If you make a 'virtual switch', you can use that switch as an override for any app that has the option of controlling it via a switch. IE. In Rule Machine it would be an 'If device is off' type of thing. I don't use Simple Lighting so not sure if it can or not.

In AHS, this would be the Control Switch.

So, in my reply to Doug, it was more of a 'Use the same virtual switch' in each app rather than this app controlling all of those.


Hope this helps.

Thank you for clearing up the discussion on the switch.

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Everything I think of I want to do for automation you seem to have created an app for it. Much appreciated

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Hi @bptworld, I have been trying out your at home simulator and really like it! If I could make one addition, it would be to add a parameter in the randomizer that would allow selecting how often the events should occur. As an example, I have some lights that I would like to run multiple times in the hour where some I would prefer to run a couple of times in the evening.

Thanks!

Sébastien

Sorry, couldn't you just make two schedules to handle this?

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You’re right - that would be a better option. Why complicate things! I’ll do that. :blush:

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Hi there.
Firstly thanks for the effort in the app! Really appreciated.
Then, I wanted to find out if there is a way of running the groups on actual time rather than period from last group (e.g. Change at 21h30 rather than 2 hours after Group x). That would enable me to have a single schedule instead of multiple for summer, winter and autumn/spring. So I would trigger the app at sunset, have group 1 on until 19h00 (whether that is from 16h00 in winter or much later in summer) when we go to put the kids to bed and then till 22h00 when we go to bed.
Thanks
Alan

Thanks! Always nice to hear.

The way the app is written, it would be a major undertaking to break it up to run at different set times. I never say never, but there is slim chance of this happening anytime soon.

Hey @bptworld - How hard do you think it would be to include "sonos" here as a device in your simulator?

Ideally I'd like to have my Sonos play a 2 hour long song I have offline at specific intervals, and it would be awesome if I could do that with your own app (or a fork of your app) instead of an adjacent rule, to facilitate the coordination with lights, etc.

I don't own any Sonos devices so not something that is on my radar. You are free to play around with the code if you like. I accept almost all pull requests. :grin:

Thanks

Cool cool.
I'm not really seeing any Groovy code example for me to go off us.

Basically I believe all I need to offer is;

  1. Sonos Device Selection (I should be able to clone your light selection)
  2. User input of Track URI (should be simple)
  3. User input of for Volume level (should be simple)
  4. Setup trigger for commands: .setVolume, .setTrack and .playTrack

My work-around for now, is when I'm in Away/Vacation mode, any motion from my outside cameras or senors triggers my sonos to play an hour long track. I use RM4 for this.

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Is there a way to make it loop/repeat?
For the random devices not in a group do they continue until the control switch is turned off?

Yes, make a rule in RM to trigger it again and again and again ... :wink:

yes

How can I configure AHS to only fire while in Evening Mode AND when all presence sensors are Away?
I assume I can use night mode to turn everything off that was left on when AHS stopped running?

As stated in the first post... use Rule Machine to trigger AHS.

Thanks Brian
I'm still a noob when it comes to rule machine.. I think I need to look there