Here is the situation. Entryway into the house. One group of lights (Philips Hue), two wall switches (Hue Wall Modules in toggle mode) next to each door and one motion sensor (Hue Motion Sensor). I’ve set the automation in Phoscon, using the Lux values so it wont turn the light on when there is already enough light in. Both switches can be used when needed. This works like a charm - hat down!
Issues show up when leaving the room and turning the light off with the switch (Most of the time by guests or by muscle memory for example). Even doing this while exiting the room, the sensor immediately turns the lights back on, just by the final move of closing doors.
Is there any workaround to avoid this behaviour?
Motion sense is one thing. Sensing occupancy and vacancy are different. Lutron’s lighting controls understand this and can do it automatically.
Motion detected in a space is great for turning lights on… but not always useful for turning them off. For turning lights off it’s often considered best to use an automation system and track a ‘state’ for the space. Motion sensors update the state and reset an occupancy timer. It’s that timer that handles turning lights off. The timer gets updated any time motion is sensed. It’s not until the motion sensor stops sending motion updates that the count-down for turning off the lights starts.
This is also handy for complex operations like turning on a bathroom exhaust fan automatically, but only if the space has been occupied for at least 5 minutes. That and a generic timer that always tracks how long the fan has been running, and turns it off once that expires. Motion in a space turns on the lights, and kicks off a start timer. If the light is manually turned off then the lights are turned off and the timer is reset. If the timer reaches a certain point it turns on the fan. The automation system notices this and starts a shutdown timer for the fan. Having the fan timer separate from the lights actions means it’ll also time itself out if used manually. Note, turning off the lights manually does not turn off the fan. This way you can leave the room and the fan will continue to do it’s thing until the timer stop. Manually turning off the fan resets the shutdown timer.
And when you’re tracking a space separately like that you can also do clever things like detecting time of day and adjusting accordingly. As in, don’t bother turning all of the lights on after people are asleep. Handy for something like an adjacent walk-in closet. You don’t want the lights to suddenly come on bright if you’re just walking past the entry door and it’s the middle of the night.
The same can be considered for something like a porch. Most of the time you’d want motion to always turn on the lights. Until you want to sit out on the porch at night and not have the lights constantly turning on.
Thanks for your reply!
I already understand this but I see your point. I have the timers set for 10 sec and it works quite good for me as the motion sensor keep updating the lights while a person is in the room. I just wanted to try to find a way of possibilities. For example 2 sec delay on the sensor after powering lights off would be enough to solve this issue. I believe this could be done making the script in Homekit but I kinda like the simplicity of Phoscon automations…