Would like to use the Room Lighting app to turn on selected lights at sunset then turn one of those selected lights off at 8:45pm followed by the rest at sunrise.
Being very new to Hubitat and the new Room Lighting app I am not sure I am going about this the correct way.
My thinking is to create a couple of time periods (sunset - 8:45pm - sunrise) and select the lights accordingly. See the image attached.
Is this how I would go about it? I am assuming the "ACT" & "OFF" is how you tell what lights you want active or off during the given period?
ACT: If enabled, will implement the defined "Activation Settings" when the Room Lighting instance is activated.
OFF: If enabled, device will be turned off when the RL instance is turned off.
You can set the "Activation Settings" to have the light turn off when the RL instance is activated.
For what you are trying to do, I think what you would want is:
All On: Looks fine. Fountain Off: Make the table look the same as "All On", but change the "Activation Setting" for "Fountain Lights" to off instead of on.
All Off: You have two options. You can either set the schedule and update the "Activation Settings" for all the devices to off.
-OR-
You can set the RL instance "Means to Turn Off" as time of day.
RL is not really meant to be a multi-time scheduler.
You may just want to setup the RL instance like a group, bundle the lights together and then you can set which ones come on during various modes/periods. Do not se anything for means to activate or turn off.
For the actual scheduling, you can then use RM, something like this is what I have for my outdoor lights. The only reason I have the double triggers is for stubborn lights that don't always act the first time. This turns them on at two different times, waits and then shuts off at two different times.
Weird thing is, if I’m within the time of the fountain Light off period and test it by hitting “activate” button, the fountain lights do turn off.
You dont pull it into RM, you set it all up and maintain the lights, settings and periods in RL. Then you just use RM to schedule it and call the RL app. Makes it easier to maintain the settings in RL instead of trying to code it all into a big rule.
You may be able to just do what you want in RL though since you only have one schedule really, the on and the off with the transition in between where one light turns off. Sorry I did not fully understand it the first time I looked.
Would need to see the rest of your RL, not just the periods. The actual periods don't schedule anything to happen, they are just time periods in which if activated that's what WILL happen. The other part of the RL is what triggers it to go on and off.
This is overkill. Room Lighting lets you specify behavior for certain Modes or time periods. For each of those, there's an option to apply the updated behavior if the time period or mode changes while the rule is active. It's completely within RL's scope.
The Basic Rules app will do all you want and no need to dive into the additional complexity of RL and RM right now when you're just getting familiar w/HE. Later you can import Basic Rules into RM if you want to do that when you're more comfortable.
One Basic Rule can turn on several lights at sunset, turn one off at 8:45 pm, and and then turn the others off at sunrise.
Oh boy guys. The RL settings I provided and that Hardax has will definitely do the trick. Exactly how I handle my exterior lights and have been for a few months now. No need to get RM or basic rules involved.
It was the activation setting of "adjust lights on time period changes" that was missed. Without it, the lights won't change unless the RL instance is reactivated some other way...like clicking the button on the page. With it, the settings will adjust to match the table when the period changes.
I have just found RL to be somewhat painful and confusing to use, compared to Basic Rules and even RM, frankly, and felt that Basic Rules is the simplest/fastest way to having the desired automation. So admittedly, my lack of love for RL is involved. And given the hundreds of posts/questions about RL I'm not the only one who has found it difficult to work with. It's the only app on HE where I have so many notes and caveats saved for reference.
That's fair. I've just noticed that often folks ask a question because they're 90% to a solution and get stumped on the last 10%. Someone comes along and gives that 10% then there will be several more posts with completely different routes. Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, and it can benefit folks later on to see the different possible solutions. However, more than once it's caused more confusion for the OP. Definitely seen some folks bail on that 90% solution to start something from scratch only to get 40% in and get stuck again. I think we (and I'm definitely guilty of it) get too excited about helping someone out so we (as a community) end up drowning people in information.
Tonight will be the real test when my RL instance runs again but in messing around last night adding the suggested “other” option that @FriedCheese2006 mentions I think was the missing piece of the puzzle.
I have to agree with @danabw, RL seems unnecessarily complicated and had me thinking “why am I leaving SmartThings again?”. I have to admit that the basic rule example you list above makes a whole lot more logical sense to my mind.
I just assumed that since Hubitat has a built in app called Room Lighting, then that’s what I should be using to change the lights in my room!
Im invested in figuring this out in RL though so I am not giving up and maybe suffering through this now will allow me to do more complex things inside of RL in the future?
I wouldn't say unnecessary since it's a pretty robust app (which translates to having a lot of options). Once you figure out which knobs do what, it's pretty simple.
That said, there are almost always 5 different ways in Hubitat to accomplish something. Both the gift and curse of the flexibility that the platform offers.
This is generally my approach. I sank my teeth into automations on here using Rule Machine. WAY more than I needed to turn a light on with motion, but it did eventually lead to being capable of writing more complex stuff.
Yes, for example my kitchen setup or master bath. Your initial one you are setting up I would consider to be above average anyway. The most basic setup is just some lights and a something like a motion sensor activation, with no time periods.
Having ACT and OFF not necessarily mean lights on or off really threw me! What kind of logic is that? They couldn't have uses some other wording?
Im still not sure how to properly utilize the ACT and OFF inside of the Device Control table though. Seeing the examples your posting doesnt automatically make my brain go "oh yeah thats how it works".
Also does the State toggle affect anything? I know you can use it to turn on and off a particular device while your editing things but does it affect things when the rule runs if you have it on or off?
These refer to what level of control you are giving RL over the particular device. Maybe the better wording would have been activate vs deactivate. I say deactivate because there are options in RL to allow you to do things besides just turning the device off when turning off the RL instance.
Here's basic use of Act/Off. With this setup, the fan is not turned on by the RL instance. But, if the fan is on and everyone leaves the room, then RL will turn the fan off.
And given the hundreds of posts/questions about RL I'm not the only one who has found it difficult to work with. It's the only app on HE where I have so many notes and caveats saved for reference.
