I want to have a rule that is toggled when everyone left from home.
I have already set it up (I have a String which sends “No one” when nobody is at home)
rule "Leaving Home"
when
Item Everyone_Home changed to "No one"
then
sendCommand(CurrentActivityHub, "PowerOff")
end
My only problem is that this will instantly turn off the devices when No one is present. I want to have a little timeout when it receives this command and after that recheck is this condition is still present (No one at home) and then do their things…
ule "Leaving Home"
when
Item Everyone_Home changed to "No one"
then
Everyone_Home_Timer.sendCommand(ON)
end
rule "Everyone Home Timer"
when
Item Everyone_Home_Timer received command OFF
then
if (Everyone_Home.state.toString == "No one") {
CurrentActivityHub.sendCommand("PowerOff")
}
end
Does this work now? What version of OH are you running? I’ve a canary rule set up in my setup that is supposed to tell me which this gets fixed and it has never fired. I’m on 2.2 release.
At least up to 2.2 release, only enum types (e.g. ON/OFF, OPEN/CLOSED, etc) can be used with changed to or received command or received update.
For this you have to add a second rule, just to Keep the “Everyone_Home_Timer” on ON IF someone is home:
rule "someone home"
when
Item Everyone_Home received command "everybody" // or whatever your trigger is
then
Everyone_Home_Timer.sendCommand(ON)
end
hint: I assume, your presence will constantly get updated with a faster interval than 5mins (which is the expire-time in Vincent’s Switch-item.
note: please don’t use the Syntax sendCommand(CurrentActivityHub, "PowerOff") anymore, it’s deprecated, please use instead CurrentActivityHub.sendCommand("PowerOff") - as Vincent used.
The advice is correct but the reason is not. The Actions are not deprecated and will stay around for the long-term. At least I hope so because there are a couple of really good use cases for them. We do discourage their use when you have you know apriori what Item you have because of everything raised here.
But if you are using Design Pattern: Associated Items or some other approach where you are generating the name of an Item to send a command to based on some other criteria, the Actions are the best way to do it since they don’t require you to add the Items to a Group and use the findFirst trick to get a handle on them.
I don’t know if this work or not, never tried. Are there any alternatives for this? Because my Item for which gets updated depending on the persons home or not is a single String… so I couldn’t use it as a switch…
Well, that is a separate question but since you bring it up my question back is why is it a String. I would expect Everyone_Home to have one two possible states. Any Item that can have only two states would properly be represented in OH as either a Switch or as a Contact.
Yes, but it has 3 state (Everyone, Someone, No one), mainly because when I created this item and rule I didn’t know what I’ll use this for… Now I think it would be better if it is just a simple switch…
How are you detecting individual presence, and do you have individual items for each person’s presence? Is so, put them in a group with states (this assumes they are switches)…
Never thought of that! Thank you very much for your help!
Ps.: So if I understand it correctly, the group switch will become on if someone is at home and only be off when no one is at home?
I have almost forget about this rule. However it seems that something is not working. I have added the Group and added the phones to these groups. I can see that these switches are OK, they change their value right after the individual “Home Or Away” switch changes on the phones.
So something most be wrong with the rules:
rule "Leaving Home"
when
Item gPhone received update
then
if(gPhone.state == OFF) {
logInfo("leavehome.rules", "Received commands:" + receivedCommand)
Everyone_Home_Timer.sendCommand(ON)
}
end
rule "Everyone Home Timer"
when
Item Everyone_Home_Timer received command OFF
then
if(gPhone.state == OFF && Guest_Mode.state == OFF) {
CurrentActivityHub.sendCommand("PowerOff")
}
end
rule "Someone Home"
when
Item gPhone received update
then
if(gPhone.state == ON {
Everyone_Home_Timer.sendCommand(ON)
}
end
This seems that is not working at all, because I never saw in the log that it triggered the expire switch and also the switch never changes… (I have added for a sitemap to test this rule…)
In rules with a received update trigger, the implicit variable receivedCommand will not be available. I would expect that you have errors in your logs from this, and it is likely stopping your rule at the line with logInfo.
If you add the Guest_Mode item to gPhone, it will act as another presence, and keep gPhone ON when it is turned on. These rules may work for you, but ask if you need some explanation…
rule "Presence changed"
when
Item gPhone changed
then
logInfo("leavehome.rules", "Home presence change: gPhone changed to [{}]",gPhone.state.toString)
if (gPhone.state == ON) {// everyone was away but now someone is home
Everyone_Home_Timer.postUpdate(OFF) // in case it was running, cancel the timer
// put anything else in here that you would like to occur when presence changes from Away to Home
}
else if (gPhone.state == OFF) {// someone was Home but now everyone is away
Everyone_Home_Timer.sendCommand(ON) // start the timer
}
end
rule "Everyone_Home_Timer expired"
when
Item Everyone_Home_Timer received command OFF
then
logInfo("leavehome.rules", "Everyone_Home_Timer expired")
CurrentActivityHub.sendCommand("PowerOff")
end
I use something similar, but I have a String item that represents Presence (Home, Away, Party, Sleep). I then use that item in rules. Like when motion is detected while Presence.state == “Away”, the sirens go off.
