Help with living room lights automation

Plugins & Plugin Development Program Logic (PLEG)
1

Hi All,

I have had my Vera 3 for just over a year now. Every few months I sit down and try to do this and I end up reading loads of PLEG forum posts, playing around with it for 2 hours and give up with confusion and frustration. Someone please help! :slight_smile:

I have a Fibaro 3-in-1 sensor in my living room and 3 or 4 lights attached to dimmers. I want the lights to go on after 7pm when there is motion detected. (I’d love to be able to base this on light level but the Fibaro light sensor doesn’t seem to work properly, but that’s another story)

I also have Kodi Media Center running and the lights dim when I start watching a movie, this is working nicely and even increases the brightness if I pause and dims again when I resume.
The problem is that the turning on lights scene after 7pm is always running. So even if I move around on the sofa, the scene will activate and the lights will go to full brightness.
What is the best way to solve this? I don’t want to use LUUP code hence I’ve been trying to figure PLEG out.

I don’t want to tie it to the movie watching as there may be other reasons that I dim the lights and don’t want them to come up with motion.

I know there are a few ways to do it. What is the best?
Do I disarm the motion sensor until midnight and then reset it? If so how do I do this in PLEG?

I have created an Input with a trigger MotionLivingRoom, Whenever 3 in 1 sensor is armed and detects motion.
I tried to create a condition for after 7PM but I cant work this part out. Do I add a schedule for MotionLivingRoom or do I have to write some code to say after 7PM in the conditions tab?
I created a bunch of actions to turn on the various lights and an action to set the SetARmed value of the 3 in 1 sensor to 0.
How do I get it to reset and Arm itself again.

Sorry I hope this makes sense, I’m a bit confused.

Regards
Marc

2

I would add a schedule for the time when you want the lights to turn on (after 7pm, and before… 7am?) and not worry about arming or bypassing the motion sensor. You can then turn on the lights with a single condition that is satisfied when both the schedule and the motion are true:

Motion_schedule AND Motion_sensor

PLEG Basics can tell you all about schedules and triggers. This is a straightforward example.

3

Hi Delta,

I’m ok with that part of it.
What I dont know is how to set it up so that it only occurs once in a specific period of time.

Otherwise as in my example, when the lights have dimmer for my movie they turn back up every time I move.

How do I do this part?

4

In PLEG, how about a check on the current dim level.

If the whole thing is in PLEG it makes it easier.
So have a schedule in PLEG, from 7pm to … 7am say (Time). Then have the device property of dim level (Dim). (Motion) as motion sensor is tripped.

Condition: (Time) AND (Dim<1) AND (Motion==“1”)
Action turn on to full brightness.

That way if the light is already on and there’s new motion, it won’t change the dim level.

5

Wouldn’t the condition be Time And Motion and!LightOn so that motion only turns on the light with motion if it’s off. If the light is on and dimmed then it won’t trigger the action.

You could also set the time schedule to be based on sunset and sunrise rather than specific time to give something resembling light levels.

6

That would work too.