I have a device that I wanted to create a more complex rule. After a trigger from device A happend, the rule looked at a different device B. If device B was "on" it would do XXXXX, if it was "off" it would do YYY.
ST couldn't do this. SharpTools could super easily, and that was my solution.
I have no doubt this is possible do do on Hubitat localy rather than via the cloud with sharp tools. Not sure if this is a capability of Rule Machine or if this is too complex?
Additionally....on sharp tools, I has as my "do Yyyyy", it sent me a text message. Can this be done within Hubitat too?
Yes all that will be easy once you get the gist of Rule Machine but more information would be needed. It would be something like:
Trigger - Device A turns on
Actions
If Device B Switch is On Then
Do Stuff
Else
Do other Stuff (notify)
Your best bet is to give a full example of a rule you want to create/what you want to achieve. Example "At 10PM If the door is open, I'd like to turn on the living room light for 5 minutes, wait for the door to close then turn it off. If the door is still open after 5 minutes, send a message to my phone and Sonos speaker "The door is still open"". A description using your actual devices would allow someone to do a proper example or point you in the right direction.
Rule Machine can be as easy or as complicated as you want. I've not found anything yet that I wasn't able to do with it.
Text messaging is not baked in, but if you search the community here, there are probably some integrations that can make it work. I've never looked into it myself, so I'm not certain.
Pushover is a popular 3rd-party notification tool for many of us (incl me) -- it's a cheap one-time lifetime license, and it works like a boss -- it's never failed me. It's also has a native integration with Hubitat, so that's nice.
Ok, Making some good progress here...found a good solution on the text message challenge mentioned above......different question now:
I'm trying to recreat a rule (or should I say set of rules) I have created in ST. The gist of the rule: When the outside temp goes below freezing outside, button A is pressed. After 1 hour the rule re-analyzes the temp. If still below freezing, it loops back and presses button A again and waits another hour. This loop continues every hour until the temp goes above freezing.
In ST the only way I could acomplish this was super clunky with some virtual switches and 2 separate rules that would go back and forth between.....it worked, but was quite inefficient.
I can't figure out how to do a "circular" loop like this in HE, however, I can creat a simple rule where, "Every Hour" is the trigger with an If<32, Then Press A. Super cut and dry. My only hesitation is this rule would litterally run every hour 24/7/365. Is running an hourly rule like this a bad idea for an HE System? It is so small and simple, and I'd think not, but not sure if running this rule 8,760 times per year is a bad idea.
The circular loop can be accomplished in Rule Machine by looking at the Repeat section of the docs (Rule 5.1 | Hubitat Documentation). You could probably use a Repeat While Expression and have the Temperature above freezing be the Until.
If you wanted to go with your simpler rule, you could. One way to prevent it from Running every hour is to move the Temperature to a Required Expression rather than a conditional trigger. The Rule will only subscribe and activate once the Required Expression is true. With a conditional trigger, it will trigger every hour and only run the actions if it is below freezing. In this scenario, the Required Expression is generally the better option to limit the actions.
