Rooms Manager: Smarter Rooms: Personalized home automation with Occupancy

rooms
manager
occupancy
rules
automation

#423

assuming there is no other engaged settings overriding the contact sensor … opening the contact sensor should trigger the checking status.

  1. do you have a timer value specified in the checking settings?
  2. is your motion sensor placed so it can detect motion after you open the contact sensor?

#424

@bangali

First, it’s been a pleasure working with you the last week or so kicking out those bugs we found. Y’all should see how fast he kicks out code. You think the app changes fast, you should have seen the private builds he had me install. The man’s a machine. Much respect!

Feature request:
Allow lighting rules to trigger ST-Scenes

Use case: I’ve taught my wife how to build and edit scenes. If the rules engine can trigger scenes instead of individual switches and buttons, she can have wysiwyg editing for the occupancy rules. I’ll just name the scene something that makes sense and…

Feature change request: Allow thermostat control to work without presence sensors.

Use case: ST presence sensors are largely unreliable for me, I use Location Mode for marshaling most things and will have mode respond to the overall state of the security system. Therefore my presence sensors are generally not configured or maintained.

Preference: Proper case (Capitalize) the smart app name. Can’t remember if it was in this thread or the one on the St discussion, just wanted to throw my vote in on the side I prefer.

Keep it up man, most useful smart app I have installed…

Nathan


#425

thank you. couldnt have fixed the error on room creation without your extensive help. so thank you for all your help with it as well. :smiley:

last time i checked a couple of weeks ago ST did not allow api access to set scenes from a smartapp. however ST does allow routines to set scenes. thats when i added support for routine execution support to rules. :slight_smile:

when ST allows scenes to be set directly from a smartapp it shouldnt take long to add scenes support directly via rules.

coming soon … just got distracted with the tiles layout not being informative enough … sorry :slight_smile:


#426

ok the last poll for tiles layout update was pretty unanimous so working on it … however its a bit of tedious work so bear with me for a couple of days … those take longer. :slight_smile:


#427

wip view of the new tiles layout … this room has both an ac and a heater so the room temperature mode is auto with the closest temperature being the cool to temperature of 75°F which will trigger the AC at 75.5°F and turn it off at 74.5°F.

the rules are not set yet so the count is 0 and last rule executed is null. havent added a power device yet so that is null too.


#428

It does go into checking after opening -that works perfectly

What I am referring to is when I open and immediately close the door behind me on walking out of the room.
Scenario - walk into room close the door - room switches to engaged - finish in room open door (goes into checking) then walk out and close the door behind me it goes into engaged again when I close it. I am now out of the room and it is engaged instead of checking again. It will eventually go vacant after the engaged timer counts down. I would prefer it to check again and if no motion reported after door closes go to vacant.


#429

havent looked at that section of the code recently but believe what may be happening is:

  1. walk into room close the door - room switches to checking
  2. motion sensor senses motion - room switches to engaged
  3. finish in room open door - room switches to checking
  4. motion sensor senses motion - room switches to occupied
  5. door closes behind you - room switches to engaged

this is why i was asking:

from the time the door is opened to the time the door is closed if the motion sensor senses motion that will trigger what you are seeing. placing the motion sensor so it does not have a view of the door usually addresses this.


#430

I understand what you are saying but by that same process it also has to have a blind time that is less than the time to travel to open the door. Most wireless motion sensors have 2-4 minutes between changing status. I have a few if setup in test mode are about 15sec plus wireless latency before status changes. So if I pass it to the door (goes active) but it not see the door and door opens before 15 sec (checking sees active motion goes to occupied) I walk out outside field of view and close the door it would still go to engaged because it was placed into occupied before door closed. Right?

For one of my rooms that gets frequent open and close it does have a motion sensor that sees the doorway (to quickly change status on entry) and the rest of the room (smaller bathroom) but I thought if the checking was configured for twice the blind value of the motion sensor and if there was an option to force checking on any contact change then this would eliminate the false positives on engaged.

It may be myself seeing this just thought it would add more customization for variety of use cases in the robustness of the app and simplify the need for placement of motion sensors. Just putting an emphasis on knowing the blind times of the motion sensors used.

So long winded response but I guess it was more of a feature request than a problem.

As always thanks for awesome work on this and I would not be surprised if this eventually becomes a part of the ST base to replace their version of rooms. Which is basically a grouping mechanism. Where as yours is a true Room manager/config tool with orchestration and automation.


#431

so if the motion sensor does not have a view of the door then as you step in to the room and door closes behind you it should go from checking to engaged not occupied.

similarly if the room was engaged and door opens then closes and motion does not see any motion between the time the door is opened and closed the room should stay in checking state and move to vacant after the checking timeout.

was i able to explain what i mean? i may not be explaining this clearly enough. if it does not make sense please ask and i will give it another try.

on any contact change it does force checking. is that not happening?

thank you for using the app.


#432

I am trying to make my Engaged settings a bit more efficient. I saw there is an option for setting when the room is busy with three options: light, medium and heavy traffic.

Out of curiosity what are the triggers for those? Something like If motion sensor is triggered X times in Y minutes?


#433

kind of. its triggered by room state flipping between vacant <> occupied certain number of times in the timeout * 10 minutes. defaults to 30 minutes if timeout is not specified.


#434

I see. Is there a way for the engaged state to be triggered for the state flipping between checking <> occupied?

Intent behind it: I have virtual switches that can be turned on to trigger engaged, but I would also like to completely automate the function based on traffic in the room. If the state goes to vacant then the lights will turn off with occupants in them, but if the traffic state can be reading the X number of times the room goes from checking <> occupied the lights will never go off and with enough motion the engaged state would be turned on automatically without virtual switch.

That is my thought process anyway, if that is wrong please let me know! Maybe there is a better way I am not thinking of.


#435

makes sense. i will update it so it is triggered by occupied <> checking <> vacant.

thanks.


#436

Thank you! You are making a great app! I love using this thing. Always trying to do new stuff with it.
Since I have you at the moment. I seem to be having trouble using a rooms occupancy status in a piston.

I would like to have some pistons check certain rooms current state for occupied, engaged, or vacant and trigger other actions. But I cannot get the piston to function using those values. I can only get a piston that checks for occupancy not changing in X minutes to work properly. Still new to webcore so I might just be messing up with this one.

Simple example trying to use Vacant to turn off switches:

Another example where I am trying to automate the WebCore presence Sleep/Awake (Messy):


#437

you are welcome. thank you for suggesting that change to is busy detection.

try lowercase values for occupancy states.


#438

Lower case worked! Thank you, Now I can keep testing some of these.

Also just realized that I can add the switch to be turned off during vacant in the apps light rules. Forgot about that. But at least I learned how to use the pistons as well.

One other future settings update. For a rooms asleep settings you have the option to turn on switches if motion is detected. If you add a Timer Override in the rules for the Asleep state (like there is for occupied) people could turn things on and off based on motion when a room is asleep. At the moment I only see a way to turn a light on and currently using a piston to turn it off when motion is gone.

Example use: Bedroom is in asleep state. Someone gets up to use bathroom and a light turns on at low %. Person gets back in bed but the light stays on without any timer to turn it off after Last motion.


#439

the light will turn off after the motion timeout value in the occupied settings. sorry that may not be clear from looking at the settings.

i will probably make it its own timeout value at some point just set the occupied timeout value for now. :slight_smile:


#440

Ah, I see. Did not know that! Thank you again. You are the best!:grinning:


#441

Sorry to keep bothering you! Is it also possible to add the ability to have multiple sleep sensors change the room state to asleep? (For multiple person households).

Think that is it for now. Sorry to keep bothering you!


#442

entirely possible. on my todo list now.