Motion sensor garage lights

I want to incorporate a motion sensor to turn on my garage lights automatically and turn them off after 15 mins. Easy enough! But what if I'm going to be in the garage, out of the view of the motion sensor, and want the lights to stay on until I turn them off? How can I cancel that OFF countdown? Another criteria is that it needs to be a simple enough process that someone that is completely not tech-savvy can do it with simple instructions!

Thanks!

Lots of ways to do this. Comes down to how elegant a solution you want.

Do you want to manually tell Indigo that you're in the garage? Then you can create an Action that cancels the 15 minute delay on turning off. (Assuming you turn the light off with a delayed action.)

Do you want Indigo to just know you're in the garage? This seems like the elegant way to go to me. You could add another motion sensor in there so you're never out of range, or some other way of telling Indigo that you're in there. Hard to guess what's best since we don't know your floor plan. Detached or attached garage? If it's detached, an iBeacon based presence setup would work. If it's attached, Indigo would probably think you're in the garage any time you're near the garage.

If you have a door sensor at the entry you usually use, you could turn the lights on when it opens, and not start a countdown until it opens and closes again.

Great ideas, thanks! The garage is below the house so the iBeacon wouldn't be best. Definitely want the lights to come ON with a motion sensor...either when I arrive home in a car or when I enter the garage from the house. Placement and setting up of that will be the easy part.

I like the idea of telling Indigo that I'm in the garage and to stop the OFF countdown. I'm afraid a second motion sensor could end up creating a weird loop, so that when I trigger the first sensor again it would restart the countdown. And now I'm starting to see the problem with turning the lights on with a motion sensor. Even if I come up with a way to tell Indigo to cancel the countdown, every time that sensor goes off it will restart the countdown. Maybe I should just set it up to have the motion sensors turn the lights on and have to manually turn them off before I go inside. The switches are right at the door so it's not a problem.

I have a situation like that where I just set it up if the light switch to the area is physically turned on it cancels
any timers or auto-offs. Similarly if the light switch is turned off it reinstates the auto-off.

Carl

I have a situation like that where I just set it up if the light switch to the area is physically turned on it cancels
any timers or auto-offs. Similarly if the light switch is turned off it reinstates the auto-off.

Carl

The downside of this approach is if somebody enters the area and flips the light on, but fails to turn it off when they leave. I'm thinking of my grandsons here.

This is definitely a consideration for me. There are times when my pet sitter is here when we are gone and having an "out of the norm" situation like this is asking for trouble. But...I could always set up a notification that the "garage lights have been on for two hours" like I have setup for the garage doors. The more I think of this the more I think I may just let the motion sensor turn the lights on and have to manually turn them off. Is it possible to setup the motion sensor to turn the lights on but not automatically turn them off?

You might consider a solution that would cover both scenarios. Have the motion detector turn on the garage lights and start a 2-hour timer. Every time the motion detector sees activity it resets the timer. If the timer expires, then it turns off the lights.

I do something similar in my bathrooms so that somebody taking a shower (where the motion sensor can't sense) doesn't get the lights turned off on them. I set the timer for 30 minutes in that scenario.

That's a great idea! That way it kinda covers all the bases. Even if the lights are turned on manually the sensor is going to get triggered and start the 2 hour countdown!