I’m trying to use PLTS to control lighting in two rooms, independently - and am failing to do something or other properly. Can anyone bring some sage advice, please? I’ve read the PLTS Basics guide, but haven’t been able to find identify where I’m going wrong.
I’ve got Aeon multi sensors in each room, but the lights in each are different. My experience is that I can reliably trigger the lights in each room to come on (and neither set of lights are displaying any kind of issues) - but my problem in both rooms is that in each the lights go out too soon. That is, when we’re still in the room. And I’m losing WAF points while this isn’t working as expected The experience that I want to have is that the light goes on when we enter the room (subject to other conditions, see below) and for the light to remain on while we’re in the room. And for the light to go off a period of time later when we’re not in the room.
In the kitchen, I’ve got the following configurations (see attachments). Actions and conditions will be on the next post.
PLTS Interval = 20:00 mins
Interval2 = 0
Reset state = Off
Switch mode = Immediate Toggle / Delayed Reset
Trigger expressions are as follows. All other trigger condition expressions are blank.
Trigger = KitchenMotion and (NightTime and KitchenLux<100)
Restart = KitchenMotion (with Repeats checked)
…where KitchenMotion is where my multisensor is triggered, NightTime is the state indicated by the DayOrNight plugin and where KitchenLux is the light level from the multisensor. NB: removing the light level from the condition doesn’t affect my experience of the light going out while we’re still in the room.
I’ve set only two actions; On and Off. Both act on Immediate timing and in On I set the light to ‘on’ and in Off I set the light to ‘off’.
Can anyone see why the lights are going off while we’re still in the room? I’ll freely admit I’m a PLTS novice, so this could well be a schoolboy error.
Any advice please? After having bought a licence for this I’d like to make use of the capabilities I’m assuming that PLTS has. However as of yet I cannot, because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong in my attempted application of the plugin.
No problem - thanks for taking a look here. I’ve attached two Status reports, once from each of my two auto-light applications (kitchen and office). Please let me know if you need any more info.
In general the configuration looks OK.
I believe the problem is that your Motion sensors are battery operated.
They typically will indicate motion for 5 minutes, with a single motion.
With continuous motion, they will trigger on first motion … and indicated motion until no motion … which can be hours later.
Your PLTS is configured to trigger/retrigger on motion. But your motion sensor is not sending new motion events.
To continue to use this with PLTS, you need to configure the motion sensors to change this 5 minute (typical) time to a much smaller time like 15 to 30 seconds.
This will use battery more quickly, because it will send more events.
Another strategy is to use PLEG, then use it to turn motion has started … and turn off the lights when the trigger indicates no motion … which will be 5 minutes typically.
If you need a longer OFF time, then you would start a timer when motion stops and turn off the light when the timer expired. Total on time after motion would be 5 Minutes (because of the motion sensor behavior) + the amount of time configured by the timer.
Thank you Richard. While my sensors can be battery operated, in reality I’ve got both powered via USB. They’re not running on batteries, so there’s no power drain concern. I’ll try switching parameter-3 on the Aeon’s down to 10 sec and see what effect that has.
I’ve toyed with both versions. But I’ve seen the Aeons report Lux=0 incorrectly at times so I added the AND condition to prevent inappropriate switch-on in daytime. Evenings are bright right now. Maybe I’ll need to tweak that logic or lux thresholds as the evenings get darker.
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The experience that I want to have is that the light goes on when we enter the room (subject to other conditions, see below) and for the light to remain on while we’re in the room. And for the light to go off a period of time later when we’re not in the room.