Many of us have automations turning lights on and off throughout the day, or moving the blinds up and down, and so on. Many of us are working with groups. Let’s say you have a group for all your comfort lights which are turned on and off with the sun.
Sometimes, you want to block certain lights from being turned on. E.g. when someone goes to sleep very early you don’t want the bedroom lights to go on when the sun goes down, or if the patio door is open you don’t want to pull down the blinds over it, etc.
A very nice feature would be to block certain devices from being controlled when certain conditions are true. For instance, when the bedroom door is closed - block the bedroom lights from being controlled! Or, when the patio door is open - block that specific blind to go being controlled.
In a SCADA system, it’s very common to be able to block certain tags from being manuvered by automations (e.g. block a valve from being moved when doing maintenance). This should be implemented in the world of home automation as well.
I mean this sounds like an issue with your automation. My lights don’t do this because I have checks to see if someone is asleep or the light settings have been manually overridden in that room before changing them based on presence.
I would never want a universal block from all automation though. I have other automations that turn on lights in the event of an emergency, lights go on even if someone is asleep then (by design). I also have a separate late night night light automation that turns on very dim lights in a few places when people get up go to the bathroom or to go get water late at night before going back to bed. Another automation that is unrelated to normal presence lights automation that I wouldn’t want blocked.
If your presence lights automations aren’t currently taking this into account consider updating them. Or go check out one of the presence blueprints in the exchange, there’s a bunch of them I’m sure one takes this into account. Or if you use HACS consider checking out magic areas as an alternative to doing this yourself.
It’s of course possible to split the automations and groups, and do multiple conditions. I can have one automation and group for the bedroom, another one for the living room, and so on. But I find it much more easier to keep, in this case, all comfort lights in one group, and then do automations, or even physical buttons, that block certain devices.
Light groups are just one example. I’m sure there are more things other people use when it could be nice to block things from happening. Sometimes you screw up an automation, or a condition, ending up with e.g. all bedroom lights goes bright as **** in the middle of the night. Again, here a nice feature would be to block the bedroom lights from being controlled when for instance the bedroom door is closed, or the blinds are down.
