Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

Posted on
Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:09 am
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1075
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

I have an action group that turns off all the lights in the house in the middle of the night. The problem is that my daughter sleeps with a light on. So my current scheme is :

1) Turn off all lights in house using the built in "Turn off all lights" command
2) delay 1 minute to let the routine cycle through lots of lights
3) Turn her light back on

#3 - her light - is on a Keypad link, and sometimes is just doesn't turn the light back on

Question: Is there an easier way to exclude 1 light without creating a virtual group of every other light in the house?

Posted on
Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:35 pm
matt (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 21411
Joined: Jan 27, 2003
Location: Texas

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

ryanbuckner wrote:
Question: Is there an easier way to exclude 1 light without creating a virtual group of every other light in the house?

Not really. I normally break up light actions intro groups (bedroom, dining/kitchen, outside, etc.) which makes it a bit more manageable. In this case you could turn off the bedroom group last then immediately turn that light back on which would help minimize how long her light is off (or make a bedroom group that excludes her light).

Image

Posted on
Wed Apr 21, 2021 8:45 am
gskarp offline
Posts: 141
Joined: Apr 19, 2012

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

I too would like to do this. I often want to turn off all lights in the morning except the room that I am in (usually the kitchen). What happens is that it turns everything off then turns the kitchen lights back on. Would love to get it to just skip the kitchen. Is this something that could be built in via a plug-in like the virtual device. Not sure how to engineer it other than building a very complicated action group


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted on
Wed Apr 21, 2021 12:02 pm
Different Computers offline
User avatar
Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

Why not just build two or more virtual device groups for your needs?

All Lights

All lights but that one in the bedroom

All lights but the kitchen

And so on.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:31 pm
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1075
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

matt (support) wrote:
ryanbuckner wrote:
Question: Is there an easier way to exclude 1 light without creating a virtual group of every other light in the house?

Not really. I normally break up light actions intro groups (bedroom, dining/kitchen, outside, etc.) which makes it a bit more manageable. In this case you could turn off the bedroom group last then immediately turn that light back on which would help minimize how long her light is off (or make a bedroom group that excludes her light).


Thanks Matt. This is what I'm doing now. The On then OFF is the problem because the keypadlinc sometimes doesn't turn it back on despite receiving the command.

Posted on
Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:34 pm
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1075
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

Different Computers wrote:
Why not just build two or more virtual device groups for your needs?

All Lights

All lights but that one in the bedroom

All lights but the kitchen

And so on.


I think this will be a solution to try. Good idea.

Posted on
Wed Apr 21, 2021 4:55 pm
jay (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 18200
Joined: Mar 19, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas

Re: Easy way to turn off all lights (with some exceptions) ?

There really is no maintenance-free way of doing this. I second creating a couple of device groups that excludes the lights you want left on, then use the appropriate group to turn stuff off. This is my approach. The bedtime group controls all lights except the ones I want left on when we go to bed. I can just use that at bedtime.

Jay (Indigo Support)
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests