@bobbyD@mike.maxwell please don’t deprecate the Motion Lighting App. There are many scenarios where it’s just faster and easier to setup.
Eg I have motion sensors in a small wash room and some walk in wardrobes. In these simple scenarios, Motion Lighting is just simpler and faster to setup.
I’d suggest that for new users, Motion lighting has a much shallower learning curve than Room lighting. I’d politely propose that the two apps could coexist in the same manner as basic rules and rule machine do.
PS I use both lighting apps but my default for simple scenarios is Motion Lighting.
I've found room lighting to be buggy and have never been able to nail down the issue. I just tried converting one of my motion lighting automations automagically to room lighting. I'll see how that performs. Room lighting seems overly complex to me too.
I have never used the Motion Lighting App. I use Basic Rules as they are a lot simpler to set up than Rule Machine.
For example to automate the bathroom lights, I would use:
When Motion Detector Bathroom senses that Motion is Active
Turn on Bathroom Light Switch
Then wait until Motion Sensor Bathroom senses that Motion has Stopped and remained stopped for 1 minute.
Then turn off Bathroom Light Switch
The delay time can be adjusted as desired. In a powder room, pantry or closet, you might set it to 1 minute or even less. In your master bath with a shower, you might need to set the delay for longer as motion sensors might not detect your presence while in the shower. If the delay is not long enough, you might find yourself showering in the dark.
I get that Motion Lighting won't get taken away from any hub that currently has it installed.
If someone who likes using Motion Lighting got a new hub a year or two from now, would Motion Lighting still be available in the built-in apps? Or should we expect to see it removed from new hubs as an option at some point in the near/somewhat near future?
Basic Rule can do these as well, and it has an even shallower learning curve that Motion Lighting.
Motion Lighting is overloaded with a mesh-mash of options. There's no fixing that short of a new app. So we did a new app.
Doing the automations you describe is just as easy in Room Lights as well. Pick the devices, pick the Means to Activate (motion active), and it automatically creates the Means to Turn Off, where all that has to be changed is the number of minutes. Boom, done.
I've seen two orders of magnitude more positive comments about Room Lights in 4 months than have ever been stated about Motion Lighting in over 4-1/2 years.
Have you actually used Room Lights to set up the automation you showed above? It has one fewer step than doing it in Motion Lighting, since Room Lights captures the setting of the lights. And, Room Lights makes it much easier to adjust settings compared to Motion Lighting.
As silly as this sounds, I had issues with getting simple motion automations to work the way I wanted them too. I’m not sure if it was PEBKAC or a bug in RL. But my most complex motion lighting requirement works perfectly.
I’m just guessing that if a tech savvy, autistic person like me finds it more complex to work with, a neuro typical person would find it even more difficult. I could be very wrong.
Except there is a human tendency to feel comfortable with what is known, and uncomfortable with something that is different / new. You may be projecting your reactions; but I don't know. Personally, I find RL much easier to use than Motion Lighting -- most of my 40 RL instances are pretty basic.
No one can know this. We apply our best judgment and we know from experience that sometimes it is wrong.
Reasons to deprecate include such things as ongoing support and maintenance. Motion Lighting is tired, in bad need of a refresh (this has been pointed out by numerous people over the past year). I wrote Motion Lighting before even Rule Machine, and I believe I've learned some things in the intervening years. However, backwards compatibility becomes an albatross around the neck of the developer, because every instance running has to go on running. This makes refreshing an app get harder and harder with time, until ultimately, the only practical choice is to write a new app.
Although in my defence, in the late 2K’s I did spend a few years as an IT business analyst at BAE Systems working with internal customers and our developers to redevelop internal applications from legacy platforms to Oracle AppEx.
I won multiple awards for greatly simplifying and improving the workflows, improving productivity and giving our internal customers a better UX.
That said, I haven’t done any UX work for over a decade.
Tbh I didn’t realise I could use basic rules to replace ML - I’m all for ditching extraneous apps that are hard to maintain, especially when there is a Good replacement option.
