I’ve just purchased the thermostat and 4 room sensors for my wife’s office (converted house with 4 rooms as offices). The goal is trigger the away mode when someone isn’t in one of the offices (everyone’s schedules are a bit static at times.
I’ve got a few thoughts on how to do it:
Ideally using the motion sensors but I haven’t found a setting that seems to switch modes based upon occupancy status.
Tie the office alarm (Ring alarm) into the thermostat and switch modes based upon the alarm arming status. However it doesn’t look like Alexa routines or IFTTT see the thermostat modes. Best solution I could come up with is use a Wyze plug to trigger the thermostat mode change.
Welcome to the Wyze User Community Forum @jbdbmcbride!
Yep. You are on the right track.
The room sensors do not have any integration into rules or routines for triggers or actions. The only thing they can do based on motion sensing is to include themselves or exclude themselves from the averaging feature that adjusts the measured temp to the average temp in the house.
Alexa doesn’t have any control over the Thermostat state either. So, to tie the systems together you will have to be creative with a Wyze plug (or several). I do this with Alexa voice control. See my post link below. Alexa can talk to the Ring Motion Sensor and the Wyze Plug. the Wyze Plug can talk to the Thermostat.
Alexa Routine uses the Ring Motion Sensor in the room as a trigger, actions a Wyze Plug to turn on (for x min). A Wyze Rule uses the Wyze Plug on as a trigger and actions the thermostat to change state.
Here is how I did it with Voice Commands. Using the Ring Motion Sensors is an easy substitution.
If you have one thermostat for the building, you probably don’t want to make the system go to away mode if ONE office isn’t occupied. You’re probably going to want to shoot for turning it to away when all offices are unoccupied.
If you want more control of the system based on occupancy, try using motion sensing comfort with the sensors. That way they only affect the average of the house temp if motion is detected. That could help if not everyone is away.
If you want it to shut off when everyone is gone, you’re going to have to get creative. Auto-away only applies to the single user vs a group so that’s out. So you need to tie the automation to another event that only happens when everyone leaves, like a specific light being turned off via a plug as @SlabSlayer mentioned.
Agreed. The Thermostat will be jumping back and forth from home and away because all the routines would be independent of each other. Lack of motion in one room will switch to Away while motion in another will set it back to Home.
The problem is that Alexa Routines and Wyze Rules don’t have and\or constraints for their IF trigger parameters.
I haven’t used IFTTT, perhaps it has multi-trigger and\or constraints?
Thanks for the info everyone. Sounds like using a Wyze plug that is tied to a routine triggered by the status of the alarm is the way to go. I can set the alarm disarm to trigger a home mode and arming the alarm to trigger away.
Seems really silly that Wyze wouldn’t just expose these commands to outside automation services.
! Would love to see multiple trigger Alexa Routines and Wyze Rules with and\or. But… Realistically probably not going to happen. 