Turn off lights after any non specific action

Flows
1

Hi everyone,

Thanks for reading my first forum post :raising_hand_man:

I made a flow that turns on the lights in my hallway, when I get home and it’s past sunset.
The lights are set to stay on for 90 seconds.

Now I’m trying to find a way to keep the hallway lights on until I have done something else, like start a flow or turn on another light.

Is there a way to do that?

Thanks in advance!

2

Welcome @Niels_F
This is a way to do this [Simple] Lights turning on/off based on motion

3

Thanks for your reply marcel, but I don’t think that flow does what I’m looking for…
I don’t have a motion sensor in my hallway and I don’t want my lights to turn off after a time of nothing.

I would like them to turn off after any non specific action

4

You can combine several flows together.

Flow1
When arrive at home
Then switch lights on
And enable Flow 2
And start Flow 2 after 90s

Flow 2
When flow ist started
Then switch lights off

Flow 3
When a specific action
Then disable Flow 2

5

These days it’s also useful to use the “zone activity” :slight_smile:

6

Thank you very much Jamie!
I will test that when I get home, but that might well do the trick;

If:
Any of the other zones are activated

And:
Timer activated by turning on hallway light upon entering is running

Then:
Turn off hallway lights

7

Does zone activity also include turning lights on? hadn’t realised that, it may make me rethink some of my existing flow, just assumed it related to movement or contact sensors.

8

The way i’ve achieved similar is with variables, create and set a variable to zero, when something else happens e.g. a light switching on or the TV switching on then increase the variable by 1, then a separate flow that is when variable is greater than 1 turn hallway light off, catch all also when everyone leaves the house then set variable to 0. Hope that makes sense.

9

Yeah I thought of that gareth, but that would mean I have to set a variable for every device in my home.
Using zones I have multiple devices under 1 “if”.

One of the zone cards is; if zone is activated.
I’m guessing turning on a light will activate a zone

10

Hmm, turning on lights will not activate a zone, as I just discovered. so I’m afraid that won’t work in this case

11

The only things activating zones are motion sensors (alarm_motion capability) and contact sensors (alarm_contact capability), so any flows that turn on a light based on motion it can seem that it also turns on “lights on” but that is definitely not the case.

1 Like
12

Add a virtual motion sensor?

13

So using the apps: https://apps.athom.com/app/com.swttt.devicegroups

this will definitely help with the light part, create a basic group, just with capability of on/off and add all lights to it, any of the lights switching on will trigger the group be classified as on.

Still thinking on the flows part.

14

Thank you very much, I think this might do the trick!

15

All in all my flows look like this:

First flow, to start a coming home timer:
If:
Someone comes home
Then:
Start countdown ‘‘coming home’’ for 240 seconds (since my homey registers me coming home when I’m turning into my parking lot

Second flow to turn hallway lights on:
If:
Contact alarm turns on
And:
Coming home timer is running
It’s after sunset
Hallway lights are off
Then:
Dim hallway lights to 60% during 1 sec
Start countdown timer ‘‘coming home lights off’’ for 120 seconds

Third flow to turn off hallway lights:
If:
Light group is turned on (pretty much all my lights except my toilet)
And:
Countdown timer ‘‘Coming home lights off’’ is running
Then:
Turn off hallway lights after 10 seconds
Stop timer ‘‘coming home lights off’’

For some reason I can’t login to my homey from my desktop, so I couldn’t make screenshots to make this easier.

Thanks again for your help guys! :slight_smile: