I have received my Sense kits and am waiting for the bulbs. I want to put a door sensor on my door to the backyard, and another door sensor for the door from the backyard to the garage. I want both to trigger a Wyze bulb that is in the backyard (covered). I intent to have the bulb turn on when a door is opened and off after approximately 10 minutes. The idea is that whether I am going from the house to the garage or vice versa the light will come on (at night) Will this create a conflict because two sensors are controlling one bulb?
Short answer is yes, two sensors controlling 1 bulb will potentially conflict.
The longer answer is you probably won’t run into too many situations where they do. I assume you’ll set up shortcuts for each sensor that will turn on the bulb when either one is opened, then matching ones to turn the bulb off when either sensor is closed for more than 10 minutes.
For example, if you exit the house (closing door behind you, starts 10 minute countdown), light turns on, you walk to the garage, enter garage. If you stay in the garage for 9 minutes then come out, the 10-minute countdown from the house door may turn the light off just after you open the garage door, because opening the garage door does not affect the house door sensor’s countdown.
Worst-case scenario the light turns off as you cross the back yard assuming you have perfect timing . Since both sensors would be set to turn off the light after being closed for 10 minutes I don’t believe there is a scenario where the bulb stays on.
You might also consider using a motion sensor, but that might not be an option if your yard is large or there’s no sheltered place to put it.
Hi Thequietman44. Thank you. Sounds reasonable. I am hesitant to put a motion sensor in the backyard since I have heard that they are overly sensitive. Also I don’t want the neighborhood cats (who have adopted us) to trigger the motion sensor.
I can’t speak to the sensitivity of the motion sensor because I’ve only ever used them in areas with people, no pets or other animals.
Another feature I’m waiting for that may be relevant in this case is shortcut scheduling. I don’t want my lights to turn on when motion is detected during the day, just a half hour before sunset until sunrise.
EDIT: Adding something else I’ve run into with Sense-triggered bulbs. If there’s ever a time you want the light to stay on for more than 10 minutes, you’ll have to leave both doors open or wait 10 minutes to open the other door and then leave that one door open. Closing either door will start the 10-minute countdown and the light will go out. In my case, I just open the Wyze app and disable the automation part of the shortcut whenever I need lights to stay on, but something to think about as you plan your automation rules.
the implementation of an API would allow your customers to accomplish – and accomplish EXACTLY how they want it to function. It would be fairly easy for people to build/share about any instruction set they could imagine.
in this instance, on something as simple as a WYZE hub device or a raspberri pi (with bridge or usb dongle plugged in), could be running simple (or very complex) cron scripts to accomplish this.
ex:
cron tab runs a status task every minute. for LAMP 1, turn it off if the trigger timestamp is > 10 minutes old.
sensor 1 opens: set lamp ON timestamp = NOW.
sensor 2 opens: set lamp ON timestamp = NOW.
With this scenario, the lamp would turn on and stay on for 10 minutes after the LAST contact sensor is triggered.
scenario #2: change notification settings/sensitivity settings, etc, based on either a schedule or based on when I leave or return home. Generate IFTTT trigger from my phone (set to away ‘mode’ if it cannot ‘see’ my home wifi SSID). The level of control would be exponential over the simple options we have today. WYZE would benefit from their customer base helping to build out ‘cookbook’ implementations that any other customer could grab and use (based on some sort of peer review managed by the community).
Yes, if you want to get a little more advanced you can use Wyze’s IFTTT integration (not as good as a direct API but adequate for most purposes) in conjunction with Apilio.io or Sequematic.com to create fairly complex logic.
I use Apilio.io to handle such logic for a non-Wyze smart plug in my shed that turns a shop light on or off depending on time of day and other conditions,
Ok I will look into the IFTTT integration. Another question. My outdoor light fixture has an ambient light sensor which ordinarily prevents the light from coming on when it is bright outside. Will I have to disable that (wrapping black electrical tape over it) to get the Wyze bulb to work correctly?
Not necessarily, if you only want the Wyze Bulb to come on after dark you can leave it in the dusk-to-dawn fixture. The only issue there is that the bulb will be offline during the day, so firmware updates will have to be planned or done at night. Also, the constant power off/on cycle introduces more opportunities for WiFi connection failures. When the bulb fails to connect it just stays on until it connects. I disabled the photo cell on my outdoor fixtures, but you can always try it with them active and see how it goes.