Review:
Aeotec Smart Home Hub - Smartthings
Automations (scenes/rules):
Of course, a good Smart Home system cannot do without automation. Because only being able to turn a lamp on/off from a distance is of course not that exciting. We have added quite a few devices so we can use them nicely in some different examples.
There are 2 possibilities to automate and those are scenes and routines. With a scene you can link different devices together. Consider, for example, that you link all the lamps in your living room to a scene.
You can then turn all your lights on or off with 1 click. To do this we go to "automations" and then to "add scene". We give a name and add some devices to the actions. Then we say that these should be turned on.
Now we can start the scene to turn on the lights.
Sunset example:
We are now going to work with the routines to automate the more complex things. We click on the plus sign at the top and select "routine". Now we see 2 rows: one with "If" for the triggers and 1 with "Then" for what he should do.
It is also nice to mention that there is also an option for standard examples in the bottom right corner. We are going to make our own example, because we want the lights in the living room to be turned on when the sun goes down.
We click on the plus sign at the "If" and select "time" and then "specific time" after which we can choose sunset and possibly give a before and after time. You can also choose specific days or all days.
Now we just have to make sure the lights come on. We can arrange this in the Then, so we press the plus sign again. Now we select "control devices" and select the lamps. And that they have to go. Then we save everything and give it a name.
Example for movement: lamp on, except when I am at home:
The above example is of course a simple example where we assume 1 trigger. It might be nice to start from multiple triggers for the next line. Let's take as an example: if there is movement, and I am at home, that the lamp in the hall can be switched on.
For this we use the Aeotec Multisensor, the Fibaro Singel Switch 2 and the location option in the Smartthings APP. And as a bonus: that the lamp may only be switched on if the lux value is below 3. It is dark in the house.
IF:
We start again with the "IF", and we select the motion sensor, then we select the motion sensor again but now we select the LUX and indicate that it should be below 3 lux.
Now we need to add presence to the whole. For this we use the built-in location detection. To get this working we need to give the APP some permissions on your phone.
When we are back on the main screen, 2 options will be added. You can select that all conditions must be met to start the rule or that 1 condition is sufficient.
We want all conditions to be met. If we would not do this, this rule would also run if the sensor falls below 3 lux, while there is no movement.
THAN:
Now we have set "all triggers" and it remains to turn on the lamp.
To turn off the lamp, we can make a separate rule where, if there is no movement, the lamp is turned off.
You could also use the "delay" option on the switch.
We have made some examples. As you can see the possibilities are endless but we can imagine that if you want to make really complex rules you will get stuck. For example, there is no option to work with variables. Or, for example, to add certain values together.
Other controllers such as the HC3 or Homey have this built in. It's nice that an "or" option is available so you don't have to create multiple rules when triggering multiple devices at once. Think of 2 different motion sensors which have to switch on the same lamp (but not at the same time).
