Best practices to program advanced lighting scene that overrides all others

[discipulus1]

Hello,

I want to create a scene for when I have guests over that will overwrite the typical motion / gate and timed sensors so the lights will stay on though most of the time they are programmed to turn the yard lights in that section off after motion stops.

Is there a way to create say a "PM Party" scene where when its activated, these lights will ignore other programming and stay on till 2am or some preset time or earlier if manually turned off?  Right now if people wonder around the yard and trigger a motion sensor / gate sensor etc, that section of the yard lights will turn off after the motion isn't sensed for 3 minutes.  I have around 10 sensors that trigger this so I was hoping for a simple way to do this over over 15 outdoor light areas with switches on them so its a pain to manually go into the app and turn them back on each time this happens.  Thank you.

[martymohr]

I set a variable named "party" that controls all the automated actions (shades, lights, etc.). When off everything operates according to its schedule. When on most of the schedule doesn't work (although some, such as the top window shades, operate regardless). When we turn off the house the party variable is reset to false.

 

[discipulus1]

Looks like I need to read up on variables.  Thank you very much for your reply!

[Cyknight]

What you'd do is create a variable "party mode" (boolean type)

Then for each programmed motion, you'd do this:

WHEN MOTION X STOPS sensing motion
IF variable party mode = TRUE
	STOP	<---ensure you embed this as shown here by dropping on top of the IF line or it will stop working altogether
{rest of you programming goes here}

That will stop the lights off on those sensors (having them turn it on if already on won't matter)

[martymohr]

Or conversely:

IF variable party mode = FALSE

     program standard actions here (indented)

 

 

[Cyknight]

1 minute ago, martymohr said:

Or conversely:

IF variable party mode = FALSE

     program standard actions here (indented)

 

 

More work as you have to drag everything over. Not a big deal if you're just triggering a single line, but if it's 10 or more rows of programming....

By adding a stop as above, you can keep all your existing (and known to function) programming completely intact, and if this fails for some reason, you just delete the IF statement and revert everything to the way it was before.

Furthermore, you could place that IF statement in such a way that you maintain SOME lines, but stop after a certain point

 

Note that where you put the STOP may depend on the exact programming. For example, if the programming is

WHEN sensor x is sensing motion
Turn on lights
Reset timer 3min off

 

You'll have to put it above the Reset timer line but under the turn on lights on if you still want it to trigger the lights the first time it senses motion.

 

[Cyknight]

Oh and lastly, you'll need to program the variable to be changed to true/false on something.

You COULD do that under a Party ON lighting scene (and it's appropriate Off scene), but ensure you do NOT do it under 'WHEN scene party ON(OFF) becomes ACTIVE' or you can get situations where you happen to 'manually' turn the lights in that scene to their respective tracking settings, and accidentally change the variable to true, or turn a single light off with the 'scene' supposed to be activemanually and trigger the variable to become false.

 

Do it on "WHEN INVOKED" instead - that means every time the scene is specifically called for (be it via programming, a touchscreen or a bound button) the programming will trigger

[brucecampbell]

You can also link an experience button to the variable for easy On/Off of your modes directly from the C4 app

    

[kevinmuise]

Experience button? How to l create that?

[Cyknight]

1 hour ago, kevinmuise said:

Experience button? How to l create that?

'Experience button' is a driver type - and with all driver, it would have to be added by your dealer.

There's several free ones, it's possible to do custom graphics and there are 'packs' of them available from 3rd party developers

[brucecampbell]

On 11/19/2021 at 6:59 PM, kevinmuise said:

Experience button? How to l create that?

If you dealer is happy to do so, and you have the confidence to do so...
Ask your dealer to send you the details on the experience buttons, you can then create your own with the images you want.
Send it back to your dealer to check and install for you.

Alternatively, you might be able to find the images and provide them to your dealer to write the driver.

Use Vector images to avoid the background being included in the image.