Noobie here. I have a simple RM that if I turn on a bathroom light, the bathroom fan turns on as well. When I turn off the bathroom light, then to delay 4 minutes before turning off the fan. However, the fan turns off immediately. I’d like the fan to remain on for a little while longer to clear out the humidity. Any suggestions.
Second question is more of getting me steered in the right direction. If I turn on kitchen light physicaly, I don’t want the motion sensor to control the light and to stay on until I physically turn it off. However, motion sensor does turn it off. Tips for the best way to approach this?
If your light is connected directly to your switch, it's more challenging because as soon as you turn on the light, you can't necessarily tell the motion sensor to ignore turning the light off. The exception would be if turning on your light can be separated from the action of turning on the switch. An example would be a Pico remote and smart bulbs.
In that scenario, you can have a physical activation via the Pico remote turn on the light, and also turn on a virtual switch to disable the motion sensor rule. Then turning off the light via the Pico remote would turn the light off and turn off the virtual switch that was disabling the rule.
Another way it could work, if you're not able to separate the switch from turning on power to the light, would be if you are instead able to adjust the level of the light. So for example, if you can turn the light on to say, 98% when the motion sensor activates, then you could make a separate rule that would turn on a virtual switch to disable the motion sensor rule whenever the light is turn on to 100% at the switch, and then turn off the switch to disable the motion sensor rule whenever the light is turned off. So whenever the motion sensor reacted, the light turning on to 98% wouldn't trigger the rule and so the motion sensor rule would not be disabled. But if you turned the light on at the switch, as soon as turned on to 100%, that would trigger the rule and the virtual switch to disable the motion sensor would be enabled until the light was physically turned off.
Come to think of it, if I walk into the kitchen and motion triggers the light on, if i Know I will want to disable motion sensing couldn’t I just go to the switch and turn off and turn back on? RM has a Command something to the effect of disable motion if light is already on?
In Motion Lighting app there's the ability to set a mode to disable turning off. But the issue with these is you need to have a way to switch the mode from turning off.
I don't know if you have a voice assistant, but that is a very simple way around this issue. You can simple ask you either Alexa or Google Home to turn the light on, or keep the light on, something like that. Whatever phrasing you want. That can be easily configured to prevent the light from turning off by setting a mode in motion lighting ofr disabling a rule machine rule or a simple lighting rule by voice.
You cannot use the light itself turning on to disable the motion sensor, and if it's a z-wave switch that is wired to the lights by mains voltage, the switch and light would always be in sync, therefor the switch is not a good candidate for this either.
Where it could work is if the light switch could be programed to act as a controller instead of a controller and responder. This is a feature of Insteon switches and I believe some Z-Wave switches also support this, but I think in the Z-Wave world it's called a controller and slave. Anyway, the idea there would be smart bulbs that have constant power, and you're digitally turning them on and off based on the state of a Z-Wave switch. But Z-Wave switches are not cheap to it's a pretty expensive remote control in my opinion.
Really, I don't know what you have in the way of switches, so I'm make a lot of assumptions here. If you're not intrenched in one technology vs the other, I really like the Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge Pro and Picos. I have them, as many others do. Hubitat's integration of that is unlink any other system at this price range. They do things with that relatively low cost hub and Pico remotes that even Lutron can't do with Caséta.
If you're controlling your home already with Z-Wave light switches, a Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge Pro and some Picos are a really nice compliment. You can also use hidden micro modules. Many doing that with Z-wave mico modules. I have some Insteon versions I control with a regular light switch, digitally via HE, with Xiaomi buttons, and with motion sensors. I can program that light to act anyway I want.
Maybe this:
Create a Virtual Dimmer to hold the state of how the light/fan got turned on.
Then create an On Rule and an OFF
On turns on the switch when motion starts and sets the dimmer to an arbitrary value.
Off turns off the light when motion ends and resets the virtual dimmer to zero.
If you MANUALLY turn on the light/fan, the virtual dimmer will remain at zero and thus motion end events are ignored.
EDIT:
I see I didn't understand the problem fully... Motion is seen before you can get to the switch. Thus my guess won't work. Maybe it's a starting point, however.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I’ll try them out when I get a chance. Work has me running around.
A lot to think about for what I though was a simple question. I kinda miss the WebCore programming solutions for this issue but I want to be native in HE.
Thanks. I’ll play with thought of using virtual concept.
I notice you were the driver author of the Honeywell TCC integration. I have my comfort net thermostat working in ST. I entered my email/password and last 6 digits. But it doesn’t login. I can login to the Honeywell portal to extract the 6 digits at the end so I know my info is good. Any suggestion to get this working?
I have a WiFi Thermostat, if you have something different or if Honeywell has multiple TCC sites, and yours isn't there... then that would be a fail, I imagine.
