Delayed Events How do you do them

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I want to open the garage door when I get home, but not every time

2) What is the expected behavior?
Garage door opens when I get home only when I want it to open.

3) What is happening/not happening?
I actually have this working use IFTTT to turn on a virtual switch. When I arrive if the switch is on then webcore opens the garage door and turns off the switch. Overall it has been working just fine, I was just wondering if anyone had any ways to do this without a virtual switch using webcore.

Really just looking for ways to improve the process, getting rid of the extra maybe unnecessary virtual switches

#2

What is triggering IFTTT to turn on the virtual switch?

Can you post a green snapshot of your piston as well?

#3

And you could use a global variable instead of a virtual switch…

#4

I have two ways of triggering the switch. One uses the SMS IFTTT and the other uses the Button IFTTT trigger.

Basically If I text a phone number any text IFTTT turns on the smartthings switch. This works well for if I’m driving home and want to open the door using my voice.

The other one I use with a widget, I press the button which turns on the virtual switch, just saves the time of having to go into the app.

Like I said, it already works, I was just wondering if anyone else had any similar pistons that were able to be triggered upon arrival or some other condition, but not all the time.

#5

hmm, that sounds like a good option. Any negatives with global variables? I’ve used local variables for a few, but never global

#6

No negatives that I can think of… there were some subscription bugs in the early days but they were squished!

#7

I have the SmartThings presence sensors in all my vehicles. The garage doors will only open if the vehicle is not present when our mobile presence sensors arrive.

#8

I tried using the presensce sensors in my cars a few years back. Not enough range for me, but this still would not do what I want. I have my piston set up kind of like an on demand. system. Basically I don’t park in my garage, but sometimes if I have a lot of groceries, etc I may bring them in through the garage. Those days I want the garage to open when I get home. The virtual button do actually work. Was just curious about other options. Global Variables is looking like a good option as well. Only negative so far, which is easily fixed with a piston, is that a button can easily be turned off if I change my mind. My 1st run through the global varaibles did not have a way to set it to “False” unless I came home and the garage door opened. Easy enough to fix though. :slight_smile:

#9

Ok, so I got the garage door working with global variables, and it works as it worked before with the virtual switch. Which is cool. That got me thinking, I’d like to do more. I do have a motion sensor in the garage as well. So Without creating another piston, I’d like to try to update this specific one to close the garage door if there is no motion for 5 minutes.

Again, for me my routine is I pull up to the garage, don’t pull car in, pop my trunk, bring in bags of groceries, get back in car, and go park. To close the garage, I either hit the button on the wall and hop over the invisible light sensor to keep it from tripping, or I pull up my phone and hit a button to close the door. Would be cool to just drive away, park the car and have the door close a couple minutes later (but just for this one piston). Not a catch all for garage door being left open.

Here is a screen shot of my current piston (I have another piston tied to IFTTT that sets the variables to True. Bonus if they can all be tied to one piston. That seemed a bit too complicated though, it would have to set the variable, and then pause the piston until I (or the wife) arrived at home, then continue, or something like that.

garage door
garage door.png1178×703 37 KB

#10

I created a new topic for this since the global variables worked and now I wanted to add a close to the garage door. Seemed like it should be a different topic. Thanks everyone