Time of Day and Current State Dependencies in Scenes

I am a relative newcomer to using my Vera Plus and have found this forum to be a great source of answers to my questions (though sometimes daunting to sift through). This will be my first post, and I thank you all in advance for any advice you can give me.
First question…
I have built many scenes to help automate my home, but there is one feature that I haven’t figured out yet.
I would like to build scenes that are Time of Day dependent. Simple example: my back sliding door has a sensor on it that, when opened, turns on the back yard lights, and when the door closes it turns them off after 5 minutes. I would like this scene to only run between dusk and dawn.
Second question…
In the example above, with a sensor turning on my back yard lights, I would like for the scene to not run when the back yard lights are already in the on position. Right now, during the cold Canadian winter, the lights in the backyard are mainly for the dog to see while finding a spot in the snow to do doggy deeds, but during summer months, we will spend plenty of time outdoors after sunset, and I don’t wish for the scene to override the state of the lights by shutting them off. This issue is repeated in many scenes throughout my house, where scenes built for convenience also override lights that I would like to remain on.
Thank you for your help.

Take a look at Reactor for this type of control. Check out the videos and ask questions as you get going.

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Thank you, Tom.

Vera’s native scenes do have a function to enable them only at or between specific times/dates. For the additional inhibits that you are looking for, the Reactor plug-in will do everything you need. It is extremely well documented and @rigpapa, the developer, is active on this forum.

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Or you could just include this bit of code in your scene:
return luup.is_night()

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Thank you for this suggestion. Reactor was just what I needed. Up until now I was content with programming strictly within the Vera UI, but now that my basement Reno is completed and I have added most of the devices my home needs (switches, sensors, cameras, etc.) I am at the point where I needed some more granularity in my scenes.
I’ve started building Reactor sensors for my needs and since I have some experience with Boolean logic, the learning curve isn’t too steep.
It is too bad that the Vera UI doesn’t have this built into it, but this forum has been an invaluable source of information.
Are there any other ‘must have’ plugins that you would recommend?
Thank you for your help.

I jump in :slightly_smiling_face::
What I use is as much as possible the minimum of App’s in order to reduce the memory usage. Which means:

  • Reactor
  • Switchboard (Virtual switches and the app is still maintained)
  • Virtual Sensor (I have different temp-sensors in various locations and I know that the one with lowest reading is the correct one)
  • I also have Sonos Controller and ALTHue (depending on your needs)
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Reactor
Switchboard (virtual devices)
SiteSensor (retrieve website and api data and parse)
VeraAlexa (TTS and routines and commands for alexa)
Virtual HTTP Devices (vitual devices that can send http and curl requests)

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I’ve been using this as condition in multiple scenes for some time now, but it stopped working a few weeks ago. Not sure why?!
Anybody else facing similar issue?
I’m on Vera Plus 1.7.5186 (7.31)