How to do this properly is a bit tricky. I can't yet do what seems the correct thing to even lock my front door. I have it set to lock 180 seconds after the door sensors says it is closed. But what it OUGHT to be is "if the door has been closed for 180 seconds, then lock" which is not at all the same thing. One of these days someone is going to go out the door, come back in 178 seconds later, and then try to close the door with the deadbolt sticking out. One idea is to have rules that can enable/disable other rules, along with some special time interval based rules:
Rule A: lock door 180 seconds after this rule is enabled, then disable this rule
Rule B: if the door closes, enable Rule A
Rule C: if the door opens, disable Rule A (cancel any pending action)
That is kind of round about for a non-techy user (my wife, who is very intelligent but not tech savvy, would say this is way too complicated)
For my garage door, I'd eventually like this:
Rule A: if the door between the house and garage opens, turn on the kitchen light (normally disabled)
Rule B: if it is dark outside and the outer garage door opens, enable Rule A for 120 seconds
That way the light would not come on when I leave, but would when I come home.
I don't necessarily think this is the ideal rules interface, but SOMETHING like this is needed. Just trying to give the programmers some ideas...
