Often times users have a room where someone forgets to turn off the light like a closet or utility room. There is a simple solution to this problem: the How-to level of difficulty is Simple.
Just follow these steps (which should work with any type of on/off switch or device that sends ):
TRIGGERS
in the outline view on the left side of the screen (or a folder under TRIGGERS
if you prefer)New…
button above the trigger list to create a new triggerCreate New Trigger Action
dialog that appears, give your trigger a name: for instance “Auto-off for closet light”Trigger
is highlighted (if not, click on it)Device State Changed
from the Type:
popup (this will tell us when various states that devices have, including on/off, change)Device:
popupDevice:
, select On/Off State
(we only want to know when the device state changes)Becomes On
(we only want to know when the device turns on)Conditions
tab because we always want this trigger to fire (you can use conditions to customize whether this trigger will fire or not)Actions
tabControl Light / Appliance
from the Type:
popup (we want to turn OFF the device after some amount of time)Turn Off
on the Action:
popupDevice
popupDelay by
towards the bottom of the dialog - check this box and enter the number of minutes you want to wait before the light goes off.OK
at the bottom of the dialog.
That's it! Now, when you turn on the device, after the delay you specified, it will turn off. You can see the Trigger Action fire in the Event Log window, and you'll also see Time/Date Action that's created automatically for you fire to turn off the device. Congratulations!
A note on this How-To: if the device has a manually operated switch of some type, it needs to have the ability to broadcast it's state when physically toggled - a lot of modern HA capable switches do that, but many X10 devices don't - for those older switches, this solution won't work.