I have numerous Homekit Automations that I need to disable when I leave home for a few days. It is tedious to find and disable them and then enable them on my return - particular due to the way that the Home app lists automations.
I have been searching for a way to select a batch of automations to disable/enable using Shortcuts, without success. There is a Shortcut to manually disable/enable automations but apparently no way to automate this.
I have also considered using an unused accessory as a trigger for action but, again, there doesn’t seem to be a way to disable/enable automations in this way.
The most common way to do this in home automaton (regardless of platform) is to use a state machine. That is, you set a flag indicating that you’re away from home and each automation checks the state of the flag before taking other actions. For example:
If “vacation” is true
do some things
Otherwise
do other things
You can use a variable to store a state, which gives you a lot of flexibility for having more than one state, or some people use a module (such as a lamp unit) which isn’t connected to anything physically but can be turned on/off to act as a flag for the other automations.
Gordon
Yes - I use this method (an unused power switch) to have accessories turn off after a set time, whenever they are turned on.
The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to change the enable/disable switch of an automation via Shortcuts. I am looking for a way to disable about 6 automations while I am away and re-enable them when I return.
I may have confused the issue by providing too much info. The gist of my suggestion is that your automations should check the status and do nothing if you’re away. Make them do the right thing contextually instead of disabling them.
Yes. I have an automation to turn off a couple of lights when we both leave the house (with our iPhones) and turn them on when at least one of us returns.
However I would not trust this method for controlling air conditioners and a water heater/pump while we are away for several days.
Oh, no, I’m not suggesting that you rely on the automatic “away” functions. I sure don’t.
The State Machine is a technique used by home automators for at least 20 years. You can use it to get the result you want today, without hoping that maybe Apple will take your suggestion. But it will take some implementation work on your part for sure, so there’s that.
I have been thinking about a data model to describe Home/Homekit and how a system of enabling/disabling a group of automations might work. Unfortunately there is no way to do this with the existing Homekit system (which seems to have grown with little consideration of future needs).
In effect there needs to be a new entity - call it Switch - that is a bit like Scenes. This entity allows users to list automations that are to be controlled by a certain Switch record and simply switch the “enable” field on or off for each of those automations. One of the issues is that, unlike Scenes, no one at Apple seems to have thought of assigning names to Automations. So it might be necessary for automations to list the Switch records that apply to them by selecting from a drop down list of Switch records such as “Gone away”, “Back home” etc (I am assuming that an automations might be controlled by more than one Switch record as in this example).
Looking back at this issue, one of my frustrations is that Automations are listed in simple numerical order. Annoyingly this means that, for example, 6:30am and 6:30pm appear one after the other. In other words am and pm automations are mixed in together in the list.
On a hunch I just tried changing my Mac’s settings to display time in 24-hr format. This fixed the am/pm issue with the listed automations. Unfortunately I prefer to not have 24-hr time on my devices.
