Override Automatic Mode Using Presence Sensor

[rsmith179]

1) Give a description of the problem

I have a piston setup to automatcially change our home’s mode depending on the time of day and our mobile presence sensors. As we all know, presence sensors with phones are pretty hit or miss, especially with my wife’s iPhone. Today, my wife and I both left the house, but her phone was still showing up as present. I logged into ActionTiles and changed our mode manually to Away, but it reverted right back to Home because of the incorrect presence showing. I’m looking for a way to be able to keep the automatic modes, but have the ability to manually change the mode to away if the presence sensors are messed up again.

2) What is the expected behavior?

Home mode automatically changes depending on the status of the presence sensors, but have the ability to manually change the modes if needed.

3) What is happening/not happening?

Right now I cannot manually change the mode if the piston is running and the presence sensors are not showing the proper status (Can’t change to Away, even though we’re gone, if the presence sensor is stuck on Present.

**4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston!

[Mike1616]

So what I’d suggest is you wrap this entire piston in a Restriction that only allows it to happen when a certain Switch is Off.

Then you create a virtual switch which you’ll use when you want to manually override this piston. You turn that switch on, and then this piston does not run allowing you to manually configure the mode the way you want it.

There’s an example here of what I’m talking about. #6

Multiple ways to restrict the execution of a piston

As we all know, there are many built-in ways in webCoRE to restrict either the full or partial execution of a piston. You can select things like time of day, days of the week, whether it’s before or after sunset, location mode, presence status and many more. However, there are times when even all of those options are not enough. Below I will explain multiple different methods that you can use to restrict either the full or partial execution of a piston. These are not intended to be examples …

[rsmith179]

Thanks Mike! Didn’t even know about these restrictions until now. Definitely going to be something that I can use in the future. Created a simulated switch and wrapped the piston in that restriction. Works like a charm now.