[Solved] Mode Manager triggering presence bug?

I have configured mode manager to trigger Home mode if ANY of my presence sensors change to "present"

This works great if the mode is "Away" (this no one is home). However, after one person comes home and mode manager triggers Home mode, it will re-trigger the mode to Home again as soon as a second person arrives home. If in between the time that person 1 came home the mode changed to "Evening", it means the mode is now incorrect.

Shouldn't mode manager ignore a subsequent person coming home and not change the mode again?

Note that I can't really use the "modes to ignore presence changes" option because it is used as a single global option for all mode settings and would then affect other mode changes.

So to outline it:

  1. Mode is away
  2. Person 1 comes home
  3. Mode changes to Home
  4. Evening mode triggered at 5pm
  5. Person 2 comes home
  6. Mode changes to Home

Am I not setting this up correctly or is this unwanted behavior?

I know I could probably do this in mode manager, but I chose to use rule manager instead because I could have more flexibility with it. I know that you're asking about mode manager, and I'm sure someone will respond in that area, because I know nothing about mode manager. (Old dog new tricks thing) But I'll give you an alternative solution if you want. I use life 360 and hubitat for presence. Here is my away to home rule.

image

[EDIT] It gives the the flexibility to restrict the rule to only trigger in certain modes. The way my house is set up, certain modes have to happen before other modes should trigger just by habit. Night mode we should be awake, away, we should be home before it changes, quiet time, someone needs a phone docked. My modes set by triggers and who is home, not by time. That way our house interacts with us instead of us having to ask it to do something. Creatures of habit for sure.

That is about the same I just configured in RM. If they were to implement an option in Mode Manager to prevent switching to Home mode if the current mode is not one of Away, Vacation, or other multiple selectable modes, it would do exactly the same as you configured.

For now I do it with RM :slightly_smiling_face:

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I use the "only during certain times" and "between two times" functions in mode manager to make sure that it doesn't change to Home if I come home when it should be Evening. This might work for you if you trigger Evening based on time.

As I hopped from ST to HE, I'm in the habit of rules due to WebCoRE. So RM is my strawberry pie for most of my automations. I should keep things simple, but it's so nice to be able to combine things and keep them together in a rule. I never had an interest in the little managers that were created after RM began evolving. (Old dog new tricks thing again.)

I feel like you could have a whole list of restrictions if they began making that possible in mode manager. I believe that it's intended for simple mode changes based on singular issues. Otherwise it would need to be another rule manager.

I can see that. However "presence" is build in as one of the options and not working correctly. I feel they should fix that

I also used rule machine because I couldn't get mode manager to do what I wanted. No matter which option I used, I couldn't get things quite right.

This rule is probably awful in lots of ways, but it seems to reliably switch modes. It doesn't throw any errors in the logs either, so it can't be that bad LOL.

The idea is to basically poll for presence devices. It takes the two presences, and depending upon if someone is home, or nobody is home, and time of day, and decides which mode to use. At night it is basically do not disturb mode, so some things don't make noises, or certain lights are dimmed in that mode.

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You need to select the use Time for Return from Away:

Also, unless the mode was Away, someone returning should not do anything. Please show the logs, as this is not the way the app works.

The use of time would not meet my needs. In my original post I just mentioned Evening mode as an example. If no one is home and mode is away I want the mode to change to home regardless of time of day.

I just don't want the mode to change if someone is already present. The screenshots below show the time of departure, then a screenshot of someone coming home and the mode adjusting to home, then at 5pm change to evening, and then me coming home and the mode changing incorrectly to Home again.

When does your mode change to evening if you don't have a time?

I am using both time as well as presence to set modes:

Presence: Away/Home
Times: Daytime 8:30, Evening 5pm, Midnight 1am

I have other modes that are based on other triggers:

Motion downstairs: trigger morning mode
Manually triggered: goodnight

To solve the problem I describer earlier, I have moved the Home mode detection to an RM temporarily, hoping Hubitat will fix this issue.

This isn't a issue, it's how it's supposed to work, you can ask the app to not automatically charge within X modes of needed.

The premise is this when not in away mode (or any other mode you tell it) at these times/on these events (buttons/switch)/ or not at all, I want the mode to change to this.

Then when setting up presence triggers you say when I arrive between A and B go to this mode when I arrive between B and C go to this and when I arrive between C and D go to this.

Optionally you can also select this.

But don't understand why you wouldn't want it to go to evening when someone arrived when it's already evening?

I see where you're going with this. However...

First, as I mentioned, if mode is away and someone comes home, the modes should change from away to "whatever" mode. But then when a second person arrives, the mode should not change again, which it does, and in my opinion is incorrect.

You say I can use "modes to ignore presence changes", but then if I set that to Daytime (for example) the mode wouldn't change to Away when everyone leaves and the mode is Daytime.

The core issue is simple and shown in the logs I posted earlier. Unless the mode is Away, someone else coming home should not trigger something

From what @bravenel mentioned above, I don’t think that’s intended behavior. Have you reported this to support@hubitat.com?

I've never seen this behavior and I've been using Mode Manager since I got my hub last year. My entire house runs on various modes for lighting and automation. I work from home and my wife works outside of the house. Mode Manager has never changed on me when one when of us is home and the other comes home. All my Home - * modes are time based if either myself or my wife are home (one or both). If we both leave, the house goes into various Away modes (again, based upon time of day). What I suspect is happening to you is that in your Away/Return settings for presence is not configured properly for all/any.

For instance, my wife leaves for work in the morning and I run out for coffee. We are both away (ALL), so the house switches to Away - Morning mode. Then, I come home (ANY) and the house switches to Home - Morning mode. Then, when my wife comes home in the evening, the house is already in Home - Evening mode (ANY, because I am here) and doesn't change.

The trick to getting Mode Manager to work properly is getting the ANY/ALL rules correct for mode based upon presence.

This is my setup:

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This is very helpful. Thank you! I am going to change my setup to follow this concept and see if it works.

One question though... in your setup... if you have set the mode to "Home - Party" and then everyone leaves, does the Away mode still trigger since you've specified mode changes to ignore for that particular mode?

Nope. Home - Party has to be disabled manually. I have a simple RM rule that if both of us leave and Home - Party is active, then set the Away mode based upon the time. It's not pretty, but it works.

Just combine your 2 devices into a virtual presence device. Both away not present any arrive present. Then use this instead of the individual ones and it will do what you want.