Any idea why this flow isn't working?

[Carl]

Evening.

I have the following flow setup. It is supposed to work as follows:

After sunset & before sunrise if the motion sensor detects movement the lights come on at 4% (so the kids don’t turn the lights on full well going the toilet in the middle of the night)

If one button on a hue smart switch is pressed then the lights come on at 35%

If the second button is pressed on the hue switch then the lights come on at 100%

Either of those 2 buttons being pressed should override the sensor action.

If the third button is pressed all lights turn off and they go back to working on the sensor. Or if no motion is detected after 1 minute then the lights turn off and revert back to sensor operation or button press.

What is happening is when the button is pressed the lights come on at 35 or 100%. But after a minute or so they dim to 4%. It’s as if it’s ignoring the instruction to ignore the sensor if the button is pressed. But I can’t fathom out why, especially when I use the same setup in the kitchen and that works as expected?

Clearly I am doing something wrong, but can’t fathom what it is.

[Wim_Post]

After the trigger ‘motion detected’ you should also add the condition that ‘ignoremotionoff’ is YES

[Carl]

Will that stop the lights dimming then when a button is pressed?

[Rmb]

@Carl

Clearly I am doing something wrong, but can’t fathom what it is.

1. Either the flow is not started, which you can find out by adding a notification card immediately after the WHEN card

2. or some logic is not correct in your flow, which you can find out by starting that flow manually and see how the flow is executed

[Patrick_Van_Deursen]

I think you need to add an “ignoreMotionOff” in the first flow. if the buttons are pressed, you don’t want it to trigger the motion flow. you DO want it to trigger the zone is inactive.

In my view where you have ignoremotionoff is set to no, it should be yes, on the ignoremotionoff is set to yes, it should be no, and the logic card in the zone active should move to the motion alarm turned on flow, and only trigger if ignoremotionoff is set to yes

[Wim_Post]

I agree.

The variable-name ‘ignoreMotionOff’ Is confusing. It implies IMHO that only the motionalarm turning off should be ignored. But when the light is turned by buttons the sensor should be ignored all together.

Therefore I would rename the variable to ‘Bathroom lights turned on manually’ and set this to YES when one of the on-buttons is pressed.

Then the top row should read:

WHEN

motion detected

AND

‘variable Bathroom lights turned on manually’ is NO

and …

and …

THEN

dim light to 4%

Edit after 20 minutes

I now realize that topicstarter is using the luminance of the motion sensor. Which is higher then 20 when the bathroom light is dimmed to 35 or 100%. (Probably also when dimmed to 4%)

Topicstarter should realize that the luminance of a motionsensor is not reported to Homey instantly.

[Carl]

This is one of my irritations with Homey and Logic variables.

Why can’t the variable just be “ignore motion” with a output of Yes or No?

so if either switch is pressed then it outputs yes and will ignore motion

If the zone has been inactive for a set time, or the off switch for the lights is pressed then it outputs no

Again probably me being a muppet.

[JohanP]

@Carl

This is one of my irritations with Homey and Logic variables.

Why can’t the variable just be “ignore motion” with a output of Yes or No?

Because it’s a variable, it just holds a value…

If it would output a Yes or no it would have to be a AND and probably a Device Tag, not a variable…

Like this :

[Carl]

This doesn’t work at all now. But when I manually test it then it runs as I want it too, i.e it turns the lights on at 5%

[Carl]

Finally!! This works. No idea why the button press was being ignored. So had to setup the button press like below and after testing this works.

[Wim_Post]

You should also connect the WHEN-card ‘off button is pressed’ to the THEN-card ‘turn off bathroom light’

For your inspiration: A solution without YES/NO-variable:

(Het is ‘s nacht≈it is dark; ‘it is dark’ is ‘it is light’ reversed)

[dsdevries]

hi @Carl
Maybe I’m a bit late to the party, as you already mentioned the flow is doing what you want now. But I wrote a tutorial about how to implement motion sensors whilst still gain full control over when to enable/disable motion sensing, etc. Maybe it could serve you as well as your motion based flows will become more elaborate.

https://community.homey.app/t/how-to-gain-full-control-over-zone-activity-using-motion-sensors-pir-and-virtual-motion-triggers

[Carl]

Thank you for that. Will take a look.