Going on a holiday? Lucky you!
Added security is one of the many benefits of turning your home in to a Z-Wave enabled smart home. This is particularly true when using the Fibaro Home Center 2 - it is just so flexible and powerful.
In this blog post, I will show you a very elegant way to implement a "Holiday Mode" - So when you are away, your home will appear to be occupied as you automatically turn some lights on and off at scheduled times. A simple solution that works really well. Let's get started…
Watch the video.
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Or...
Read the instructions.
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Create a "Holiday Room"
This step is completely optional - however I strongly recommend creating a new Room in Fibaro Home Center called Holiday - this is simply a way of keeping things neat and tidy. As we will only be using the Holiday Scenes sparingly (when you are away), it is a good idea to keep this tucked away in its own room so as not to clutter up the rest of your rooms in Fibaro.
Within the Fibaro Home Center web interface…
1. Click on Rooms in the top menu panel.
2. Click Add new on the left menu under Rooms.
3. In the Add Room section, type Holiday. 4. Now click the Add button.
We now have a new Holiday Room where we can keep all of our Holiday Scenes that we will create below.
Change the Holiday Room icon
I am a big fan of customising the icons in Home Center - you can read more about changing Fibaro Home Center Icons here.
You can use any icon you like - I have provided the icon I use below…
Hint: Right-click on the image above and choose "Save image as" to save it onto your computer. You can then load this icon for your Holiday room by following this guide.
Create Holiday Scenes
Now we will create Scenes that turn on / off some lights at a given time each day. Feel free to create as many Scenes as you like, each turning on / off at different times of the day (even on different days of the week).
I have kept my Scenes rather simple - one Scene to turn lights on - one Scene to turn the lights off - with a small delay between each light coming on / off so it is not obvious that a schedule is turning on all the the lights at once.
Example of On Scene.
Example of Off Scene.
Hint: You can set a delay (in seconds) for each light turning on or off in the red delay field. For example, enter 600 for a delay of 10 minutes.
Creating a Holiday Mode Switch
Now for the magic that ties it all together. Most of the time, we do not want our Holiday Scenes to be running (i.e. we are not on Holiday). You could go through and disable each Holiday Scene when not in use and enable before you go away… however this is tedious - and I am not a fan of tedious! So let's make it simple - one click to turn all of our Holiday Scenes on or off.
How to create a Holiday Mode Virtual Device Switch...
1. Click on Devices in the top menu panel.
2. Click Add or remove device on the left menu under Devices.
3. Select the Add button under the Virtual Device section.
4. Type a name for your Virtual Device (i.e. Holiday). 5. Assign it to our Holiday room. 6. Click the Advanced tab.
7. Under the Choose set of buttons section, check the box next to Two buttons per line. 8. Click the Add Set button.
We now have two buttons we need to configure...
Button 1 (Off).
1. Change the Label to Off. 2. Change the Radio Button from String to LUA. 3. Copy and paste the following (twice) to turn off the Scenes fibaro:setSceneEnabled(88, false); 4. Change the Scene ID numbers to match the IDs of your Off Scenes.
Button 2 (On).
1. Change the Label to On. 2. Change the Radio Button from String to LUA. 3. Copy and paste the following (twice) to turn on the Scenes fibaro:setSceneEnabled(88, true); 4. Change the Scene ID numbers to match the IDs of your On Scenes.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you select the Save Button on the right of your screen!
Hint: To find the Scene ID of the Scene you would like to associate with the above buttons, simply click on the "Spanner" icon for your desired Scene and take note of the ID number.
Hint: You can add as many Scenes as you like to the above buttons by simply copying the LUA code and pasting it onto a new line - be sure to change the Scene ID for each new line.
You may also wish to change the icon for the on / off Virtual Device buttons, feel free to use the icons below...
Hint: Right-click on the images above and choose "Save image as" to save them onto your computer. You can then load these icons for your Holiday Mode Virtual Device - Watch the video above for more details.
We are done. You now have a Virtual Device with two buttons - On / Off.
Try turning the Virtual Device On and Off - you will note that it enables / disables the Holiday Scenes we created. So when you go away on holiday - simply click the On Button and your Holiday Scenes will become active.
When you return from holiday, click the Off Button and your Holiday Scenes will de-activate.
As always, please leave a comment below if you run into any issues – we are always happy to help. If you have found a better or more efficient solution than above, let us know so we can share it with the World :)
All the best,
Brad
