I was looking for a way to switch on a light when my camera detected movement then switch off after a pre-set time. I know it’s easy with the PIR but the camera doesn’t tell you when it’s stopped and after a lot of searching through forums I couldn’t find a simple way to do it.
I use the Sonoff via IFTTT to control the mains so I played around with the ‘Timer’ and ‘Loop timer’ function but no joy, however I noticed a setting called ‘Inching’.
All Sonoff products I’ve used are really great but their translated documentation is the worst and I couldn’t fine any description as to what it does.
The answer is that ‘Inching’ is in fact a countdown timer !!! perfect for the job
This is why I desperately want them to open up motion sensors and the sense sensors to Alexa routines. If I am understanding what your looking to do correctly, I have that set up with my Ring. The way it works for me is between 11:30pm-5:30am (when all of my outside lights shut off for the night) if my Ring detects motion, the routine will turn on all of my outside lights then wait 5 minutes and shut them off. All of my outside lights are on WEMO smart switches, but you should have the same options with sonof. It works great with my Ring, but the Wyze camera covers more of my driveway.
For now, the only simple solution requires 2 Sonoff devices.
The first Sonoff will be activated via ITFF when the camera detects movement (as you are already doing).
And it should have an INCHING (settings > inching) to order its shutdown after a few seconds (3600 maximum).
You will need to create a scene in the eWelink app that orders to turn on the second Sonoff device when the first one turns on. And another that does the opposite, turn off the second device when the first one turns on.
In this way you can continue controlling the same light manually, regardless of the orders received by the camera.
It would be necessary to add some way to limit all this to night time.
The latter is what I need to solve in a practical and simple way
The loop timer works just fine as a shutoff timer for me. Set the “Start time” as any time in the past, set the “Cycle” to your chosen time, “Start action:” to “OFF”, leave “After” unchecked, check “Enable”, and then save with the “Confirm” button. Inching can only go up to 1 hour, Loop timer can go up to 24 hours 59 minutes.
I have the sonoff products, and this does work well with the ewelink app. I recently bought the wyze plugs with hopes to accomplish this using the wyze cams and plugs. I can’t seem to find a way to do this…which is too bad. They rally need an option to to have their plugs trigger on and off (30 seconds would be ideal) when their cameras detect motion.
