Auto lights on and off when in or out of room tips

Flows
1

Hi all,

I was wondering, how do you set up lights to turn on automatically when you enter the room and to turn of when you leave it? What do you guys use?

I use a group for all the motion sensors and to let a timer start once the motion sensor is turned off.
When that runs out it turns the lights off.

Thanks

2

Take a look at the timer app.
It has all functionality of switching on/of in one card

3

Actually you can use the Zones feature. No need for timers to get this done.
Homey knows when a zone is active if you have motion sensors or contact sensors there.

4

And how long the light stays on depends on how long the motion sensor(s) remains active (cancellation delay)?

5

No. It depends on what timeout setting you use for the zone which counts after the sensor became inactive.

6

Okay, got it. But you can only set the timeout setting in relatively coarse time steps. With a timer (e.g. the chronograph app) you can choose the time freely.

Which devices activate the zone? Only motion and door/window sensors, or others as well?

7

I use fibaro motion sensors and door/window sensors with this feature. They just need to be assigned to the zone/room.
I control lights and multiroom audio with this functionality. Also found that you do not really need that fine grained timeouts for this usacase. If you want instant person tracking per room you need to use a different technology, but would also be possible without extra timer apps.

8

Tip 3 !

9

Thank you all for this answer. Okay. So timer app is a good way. Hm. I didn’t think of zones yet. Good one!
I’m going to move soon, so there is a lot of potential there, heheh.

10

AliExpress: Aqara Motion Sensor. Works like a charm in combination with Zones!

1 Like
11

Where can I find that setting? I searched in the flow and settings.
EDIT: Found it in the flow. Zone inactive for… X

1 Like
12

Have a look at my tutorial Tutorial - Advanced automatic light control with flows, it contains all the information you need :slight_smile:

13

It’s a tricky one, really depends on what sensors and light bulbs you use. I eventually got to a solution using countdown timers app with aqara sensors and zigbee bulbs. But it took a lot of trial and error. Some points to think about from my experience.

  • I want the light to turn on when it’s dark. But the lux value gets updated only when motion is detected so keep that in mind especially if you wish to mix them up, for example, I wanted to turn on a light also from a door sensor.
  • What happens if the power goes out ? Zigbee bulbs might end up out of sync with homey and it takes a while for them to reconnect as well.

I don’t think my flows would be much help, one needs to figure it out on their own to adjust them to their needs.

14

Hmhm. Yeah. I now use day and night time for that (not lux).
But yeah, timer is something I guess would be best. Hm