Need help with Home/Away/Night/Vacation

Community Playground Getting Started & Initial Setup
#1

So I’m really confused right now. I’ve been using the Vera 3 for about a year now and love it. For the past year I’ve had the system set up to turn the lights on and off at sunrise and sunset using a scene. My needs have expanded and I’m trying to understand the Modes of the system. This is what I’m trying to do:

  • When I hit Home I want all the entry, deck and garage lights to come on at sunset and all go off at sunrise
  • When I hit Away I want only the entry and garage lights to come on at sunset and all go off at sunrise
  • When I hit Away I want my thermostat to change to a lower temp
  • When I hit Away I want the front door to lock

It seems so damn simple but I can’t get it to work.

What I’ve done so far… I’ve created scenes for lights on - home and lights on - away and lights off all. I’ve used the internal schedule for sunrise and sunset but also have tried it with the Day/Night add-on.

I’ve gone into the Modes and this is where I get confused. Do the scenes work WITH modes or are they independent? Modes is where I’m setting the door lock and the temperature but what do I do with the lights? Also when I hit the Away button to test how its going it does lock the door and change the temp on the thermostat but the lights aren’t doing what they are suppose to do depending on the time of day.

Thanks for any help. And sorry if this has been addressed before.

#2

Well no replies. I’ve played with it and I think I’ve got it somewhat figure out. Is there a way that the system can query the scenes when you choose a mode?

#3

I believe the mode plug in can help with that

#4

Yes. “HouseModes Plugin” is useful to move the vera to certain modes without user interaction or based on events.

If I understand what you want to do I think the vera can handle this without that particular plugin.

The modes and scenes do work together. For away, it would be good to have the mode itself perform the door lock or any other event you want to happen immediately.

It sounds like you have the scenes set up. The missing piece for you is to have the scene run only in a particular mode. This is an option for when you create the scene. If you go back and edit the scenes. Set them up to run only in a certain mode. See attached.

#5

Thanks for the replies. I will have to check out that plug in. My scenes do run with the mode but not instantly when I push the mode button.

So what I’ve done.

  • Set up scenes for the lights based on the Home, Away and Vacation and set those scenes to run on those modes.
  • The scenes are triggered with the day/night plug in
  • I’ve set the door lock and the thermometer within each mode themselves.

What works:

  • When I push the mode the door lock reacts, the thermometer gets set and as the scene trigger cycles it works just fine. In other words it’s doing its job once it’s set and the lights function based on the scene at the NEXT TRIGGER cycle.
  • So if I go from Home to Away during the day it works just perfectly because the lights are off and don’t need to be turned on until the day/night plug in turns to night.

What doesn’t work:

If it’s 9pm let’s say and I’m on Home mode and I leave and hit my Away mode. The door triggers, the thermostat triggers but the lights stay where they are. I’m not sure if it’s an issue with the day/trigger, or if it’s the mode not querying the scene based on that trigger.

Any thoughts?

#6

Ok.

You could use the housemode plugin I think. Have you looked at the plugin? It can be used to set certain actions based on modes selected. When you install the plugin you then create a DEVICE that has the various vera modes. You can then use this DEVICE to create scenes. You select a mode just like you select a light switch or some other device within the scene creation tool. So for the 9pm scenario you would set up a scene to do what you want based on mode. The day night plugin might be to restrictive since you are trying to trigger specific behavior based on modes. Housemode plugin might be the answer.

This thread might help: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=18679.0

Specifically, http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,18679.msg141962.html#msg141962 This one allows actions to occur or not between specific times.

I know…it hurts your brain if you are like me and learning from scratch.

I apologize if I am not making sense. I know enough to be dangerous with this stuff.

#7

Finally had the time to play with that Mode Plugin and it still doesn’t seem to be doing what I need it to. Let me try to explain what it is exactly that I’m trying to do again.

Devices: Thermostat, Door Lock, Deck Light, Garage Light, Exterior Entry Light, Interior Entry Light

When I hit the HOME mode button and it’s DAY TIME I’d like the system to:

  • set the thermostat to 70 degrees
  • no change to door lock
  • poll the light switches to make sure they are all turned off

Then from that point I’d like the system to:

  • Turn the Deck light, garage light and Entry lights on at NIGHT and off at DAY

When I hit the HOME mode button and it’s NIGHT TIME I’d like the system to:

  • set the thermostat to 70 degrees
  • no change to door lock
  • poll the light switches and turn the deck light (100%), garage light and entry lights on (25%) if they aren’t already set

Then from that point after I’d like the system to:

  • Turn the Deck light, garage light and Entry lights on at NIGHT and off at DAY

When I hit the AWAY mode button and it’s DAY TIME I’d like the system to:

  • set the thermostat to 58 degrees
  • lock the door
  • poll the light switches to make sure they are off

Then from that point I’d like the system to:

  • Turn the garage light and Entry lights on at NIGHT and off at DAY

When I hit the AWAY mode button and it’s NIGHT TIME I’d like the system to:

  • set the thermostat to 58 degrees
  • lock the door
  • turn on the garage lights and entry lights (or since they will most likely already be on, set the deck lights off and the garage and entry lights on)

Then from that point I’d like the system to:

  • Turn the garage light and Entry lights on at NIGHT and off at DAY

What I have currently are scenes created for the daily turning on and off of the lights using the Day/Night plugin as a trigger(and this has been working just fine)

I’ve changed the Modes to DEFAULT from the dashboard

I’ve created scenes using the HOUSE MODES plugin.

  • one for Home - Day
  • one for Home - Night
  • one for Away - Day
  • one for Away - Night

Because I don’t want lights to come on when I hit a mode button unless its night time. I also include the Day/Night as a trigger.

This didn’t work. The thermostat and door lock changed using the the HOUSE MODES scenes but that also worked when I set those directly as a custom setting in the Modes directly. The light configuration did not change however. I could not set the lights directly in the custom setting of the modes directly because I don’t want the lights to come on if I hit the Away button and it’s the day time.

I’m just frustrated with the fact the system ONLY uses triggers to make things happen during the time of day. I would be nice if the system would query the Day/Night plug in no matter what time of the day you choose the button and set the lights according to the scenes set for Day or Night. Right now if I have all the lights on because it’s night and I’m in Home mode and I leave at night and I hit the NIGHT mode button it does not turn off the deck lights. I have to do that manually. It works ok during the day because the scene already turned all the lights off so changing to away mode will just set the system for the next trigger point which would be NIGHT in the Day/Night plugin.

I hope I’m making sense here.

Thanks again for the help.

#8

This is because the Vera doesn’t support AND for trigger only OR which means if any of the triggers are true the scene will run.

There are several options for creating AND triggers, you can create conditional scenes using some LUA code: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,18679.0.html

You can use Program Logic Event Generator (see the plug in)

You can use the Combination Switch (see the plug in)

#9

This can all be done with PLEG.
You can set up different conditions for what you want. Search the forms to learn about PLEG you wont need anything else.

#10

Thanks for sending me in a direction that can help! I’m off to educamacate myself. I’ll update when I have the time.