Night mode to switch night light with sensor

G'day everyone,
I had a bit of a look through the forums but couldn't find anything.

Just wondering the easiest way to achieve this automation.
Master off/ night mode switch to turn off house lights and initiate night mode.

Night mode will disable motion operation of main hall lights(outside bedroom) and enable motion operation of skirting lights.

Night mode is disabled by sunrise.

Currently I have the skirting lights running all the time during night mode.

Is this achievable without the logic engine?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi Fergs,

There are a few ways to do this without logic, but you will need a device that can schedule such as a Touch Screen without logic, or a clock etc if you want full control of the times it does each mode.

From memory, the easiest way is to use the 'logic' tab in the relays / dimmers. Open the dimmer or relay in Toolkit and read the 'Logic Tab' help.

Let's say you have group address 'Hall Downlights' and 'Hall Skirtlights' assigned to a relay's channels. You would 'AND' these alternatively with a logic group called say 'Night mode' or 'Day Mode'. Use another Logic Group Address called 'Hall Lights' and 'OR' this to both 'Downlights' and 'Skirtlights'. Now use the scheduler to have 'Day Mode' on every day covering whatever times you want and 'Night Mode' on at whatever time you want the Skirtlights on.

On occupancy sensors or wall switches, just set them to turn on 'Hall Lights'. The relay will see this logic group go on, so the OR function is satisfied and so it would normally then turn on 'Hall Downlights' / 'Hall Skirtlights' but they also require the 'AND' to be 100% and this is driven by the scheduler. So if Day Mode is on AND Hall Lights is on then 'Hall Downlights' group and associated relay channel should go on.

This is an 'all from my head set up' for something I haven't done for a long while, so it might not be 100% right and you may need to play around a bit with the logic tab to see what it is doing for you but the principle should work. You can just scale up the logic tab concept to cover whatever groups on whatever dimmers/relays you want to respond to your Day Mode, Night Mode configurations. Just be careful as with AND, you can set it up in a way that will actually have your normal light switches disabled during one mode or the other so you need to ensure it works as intended. You could also use a single group as the day night indicator rather than two if you wanted eg Logic Group 'Daytime' could be 100% during the day and 0% at night.

Other ways to do something similar include using scheduler with scenes using triggers and enable groups, or also many of the occupancy sensors have a day mode and a night mode that you can allocate different group addresses to. You can use these in your 'logic tab' as well without the need for a scheduler. This 'AND'ing function is quite often used to give an 'All Off' switch near a front door etc, but this is usually better achieved with a 'Lights Out' scene or otherwise, if you came in the back door, none of the lights would work until you turned on a switch allocated to the 'All Off' group.

Good Luck,

Brad

Jumped in a bit early.......Scratch that option, won't work as you can only allocate an AND or an OR to a channel, not combinational logic.

 

Hi Fergs,

Suggestion # 2

On a key input unit, have a button ('Goodnight/night mode') set a scene which turns off all your lights that you want off AND also sets a Group 'Skirt Lights Enabled' to on, and 'Hall Downlights Enabled' to off.

In your relay/dimmer, you just assign group 'Skirt Lights' to one channel and 'Hall Downlights' to the other. Add two logic groups under the logic tab being 'Skirt Lights Enabled' and 'Hall Downlights Enabled' and 'AND' this group with the corresponding two channels. This makes the logic swap between the two based on the state of the 'enabled' groups.

In your PIR, in the 'All Movement' section, you have it set to control multiple groups and put in 'Skirt Lights' and 'Hall Downlights' groups.

Not sure which occupancy / light level sensor / Sunrise/Sunset PIR you have and they all have slightly specific config but generally, set the Sunset to Sunrise to set a scene that changes the state of groups 'Skirt Lights Enabled' and 'Hall Lights Enabled' to the opposite of the night mode scene, which will then make the hall lights work again during the day and disable the skirt lights. If you want to get fancy you can set the two scenes in the key input unit and trigger the appropriate scenes from the PIR and use a button to swap between the two scenes using a method like Ashley mentions in this post.

By just using a scenes for the 'Master Off / Night Mode' to set the lights off instead of an 'AREA' or an AND config, it is safer as if there is a fire etc, All the normal light switches should still work without the need for someone to override 'Night Mode' first for the lights to work. Of course, test it all to make sure.

Phew!!! Did that cover it all?

If you have a scheduling unit such as a touch screen etc, you can do the sunrise in it and also would give you more granular control of the timing of things.

Obviously these suggestions give you a lot of food for thought to play around with these different functions/operations and set it up to do exactly what you want based on the hardware models you have.

Hope that does the trick,

Brad

 

Thanks

Much appreciate your thoughts.
I come from an industrial automation background and find it difficult to find what I need it to do.
I did do the logic course a couple of years back but don't do enough of this type of work to keep fresh.
There is a mark 2 b&w screen with logic on site.
Thanks