Flows - predefined states and manual triggers

Roephoed · May 2018

Hi All,

At this point all my lights and music in the house are done automaticly by homey and it works really nice. I've set it up in such a way, that my house is in a state (for example "everyone sleeping", "movie time", "normal afternoon at home") and all devices react differently due to these states. E.g. During "normal afternoon at home" the lights won't go on, During "everyone sleeping" only some nightlights will turn on but dimmed etc.

This is all working great! However, sometimes I would like to differentiate a little from these set states and want to turn on something manually. Except this is not possible now, because now Homey see this difference and when a trigger is triggered (movement sensor etc.) homey re-enstates the state that is applicable. So in other words, sometimes I simply want to overrule homey for certain devices. I am curious how everyone include this in his/her flows?

Thanks all for the help/ideas in advance!

angr · May 2018

Have a similar situation.

I've built flows that triggers on both motion and also on changes in light conditions.

I want to use both as triggers, because if no-one's home (=no motion) then most/all lights should be off, but once someone is home you don't want to go around turning things on manually. I also trigger on light conditions, i.e. when it's bright enough most/all lights go off via a TurnOnLights-flow, and vice versa when it's getting darker.

I've tried to use the Sun settings but it varies far too much with the weather conditions to be useful. If it's clear blue skies then you don't need any lights on until late, but if it's dark with overcast or rain you possibly want them on early.

In my triggering flows (Motion/LightConditions), I have a boolean indicating that DefaultLights are either on or off, and I use that as a condition in the same flows. If I have had a flow triggered by LightConditions (i.e. it's getting dark), then DefaultLights = true. If that flow gets triggered again via changes in light conditions (i.e. now even darker) it will check if DefaultLights = true, and if it's already set it will not run again. This allows me to turn on/off lights outside of the TurnOnLights flow, as this flow only gets triggered once until either there's no more motion, or light conditions are again light enough for lights to be turned off and then DefaultLights=false, which will allow the TurnOnLights-flow to be triggered. I'm sure there are other ways of doing this too, but this works for me.

Eternity · May 2018

@Roephoed
Perhaps create an extra state called 'manual' or 'override'. This stops all other states/flows (perhaps by using the App Candy) and let's you alter the current settings.

Roephoed · May 2018

Eternity said:

@Roephoed
Perhaps create an extra state called 'manual' or 'override'. This stops all other states/flows (perhaps by using the App Candy) and let's you alter the current settings.

I was thinking about this one too. I hoped there were other idea's, that would be more straightforward. Because this means that I need to do 2 actions, of 1 is not straightforward with people who do not know my house.

Eternity · May 2018

Roephoed said:

I was thinking about this one too. I hoped there were other idea's, that would be more straightforward. Because this means that I need to do 2 actions, of 1 is not straightforward with people who do not know my house.

Not sure if I am pointing you in the right direction, but perhaps try to (mis)use the App State Control

The idea behind it is that a state can be triggered via various triggers, but the manual mode has higher priority. I used this in my bathroom; lights were lit by movement, but I also was able to overrule the automatic switching by manually pressing the light switch.

So - in your case - if someone alters a switch, it overrides all other settings.

Good luck!

Flows - predefined states and manual triggers

Comments