Is there a way to have a light stay off if I ask it to go off?

[pcgirl65]

I have lights go on with motion but I am wondering if there is a way for the lights to stay off if I ask Alexa to turn the lights off? And vice versa?

[Kevb]

I use a virtual switch as a Motion Master switch. For each event with motion, there is a condition to see if the switch is on, i.e. IF motion detected, AND IF Master is ON, then turn the light on. You could set up a routine to turn off the light and turn off the master switch. You could turn the master back on later. I turn off the master switch at certain hours, or back in the "old days", when we had guests over for a party. You could even set up virtual switches for each room if needed. It's worked well for me.

[pcgirl65]

How do you make Master Virtual switch go on?

[Kevb]

I have mine turn on in the morning, then off at night. I don't want it going off in the middle of the night. You could have an Alexa routine turn it back on after a delay, or have Homeseer do it.

[pcgirl65]

I understand your logic but I was wondering if there was a way that could be determined if the light went on or off with an event or was turned off/on manually? Either by voice or switch? I have virtual switches setup for "Reading Mode" in different rooms and I ask Alexa to turn those on so the lights will stay on but it gets cumbersome trying to remember the exact name of virtual switches. And trying to teach the rest of the household what to say is difficult.

[lveatch]

I understand your logic but I was wondering if there was a way that could be determined if the light went on or off with an event or was turned off/on manually? Either by voice or switch? I have virtual switches setup for "Reading Mode" in different rooms and I ask Alexa to turn those on so the lights will stay on but it gets cumbersome trying to remember the exact name of virtual switches. And trying to teach the rest of the household what to say is difficult.

I achieve this in a few ways.

For dimmer devices:
I use the dimmer value to manage this. For example. When the dimmer is turn on manually (physical or voice), homeseer will see the device is set to "on" (100%). When i use a homeseer event to turn on the light, I set the light to a value < "on / 100%", eg. 99%. My events which control this dimmer light have conditions for if the light is "on/100%" or at 99% before turning the light off.

For non-dimmer devices, I have to use a virtual device a as on / off are the only values. You do not need to voice command each virtual device, rather the real light name. When voice is used to turn on / off the light, have it turn it on / off. When homeseer is controlling the light via an event, turn on / off the virtual device and use the virtual device as a condition.

Clear as mud?

[Stuart]

I'll see if I can explain what I use. In my kitchen I can turn on lights by either motion, actual switch, or Alexa. There are 2 virtual devices that I set to different levels during the day. light brightness by user and by motion. one may be 74% and the other 75%. This way you wont see the difference in brightness but Hs knows what event turned on the light. So when a light is turned on the event checks what the level should be set to based on the virtual device value. So you could also have an Alexa event to turn off the lights and set the level to 1 or 2 % and the other events would check before turning on the light, and if not off or 0 then they would not turn on the light. Turn on the light and there is no flag to reset.

Stuart

[jgreenberg01]

I have several virtual switches to turn motion detection on/off in various rooms/outdoor areas. They can be turned on/off in 3 ways:

1. Using scenes on the z-wave switches: 2 taps of the top switch turns on the motion detection for that specific light, 2 taps on the bottom switch turns it off. Also have speakers announce to confirm, although that's become annoying and I may disable that.
2. HSTouch tablets all have switches to turn them on/off
3. Set up Alexa Routines that run HS4 events to turn on/off the motion detection, ie: "Alexa, turn off lanai motion"

[TC1]

I have a strategy similar to @jgreenberg01 since my wife and I like the motion detected illumination in the kitchen, yet my son hates it. Using switch taps on the dimmer will set a virtual device to disable it.... but only for a set period, say 30 to 60 minutes. This allows my son to do stuff in the kitchen without the lights turning on and without anyone having to remember to re-activate the motion detection.

[pcgirl65]

jgreenberg01 I didn't know you could turn motion off on a motion sensor. These are good examples. I will have to think about how I want to do this. Thanks!

[Guest]

jgreenberg01 I didn't know you could turn motion off on a motion sensor. These are good examples. I will have to think about how I want to do this. Thanks!

You can but don't necessarily need to "physically" turn off the motion sensors but simply ask HS to ignore some events/actions IF (condition) the motion sensors are "disabled" (via a virtual device).