Help Smart Actions - Best Practices

geemacd · Nov 11, 2011

In order to help people with smart actions and how to get the best out of them, thought it would be good for people to put in this thread their settings in order to help others best run their phones and get the best it of their batteries.

Hope everyone can help all their fellow owners

Szadzik · Nov 11, 2011

My first one was to disable background sync at night so emails would not wake me up.

Second one was to remind me to charge the phone.

Third dims the display when battery gets low.

budwizer · Nov 11, 2011

I'm just getting started with setting it up and seeing if I can replicate my profiles from a similar type of app that I was using. The app is good for a v1.0 however there are several features I hope that Moto will look to implement such as inverse (NOT) based rules and more granular sound control (i.e. leave ringer on but silence notifications).

So far I have the following setup:

Home
Trigger

Wifi Connection to my AP

Actions

Ringer Volume - Set Ringer to 100%
Bluetooth - Off
Ringer - Set to custom ringtone

Work
Trigger

Timeframe - Work (8a -6p)

Actions

Ringer Volume - Set to Vibrate
Bluetooth - On

Night
Trigger

Timeframe - Night (11p-6a)

Actions

Ringer Volume - Set to silent
Bluetooth - Off

Charging
Trigger

Charging - Any source

Actions

Display Timeout - 10 mins

I haven't yet figured out how to have my home profile override my work one if I work from home during a weekday. This is where having a NOT condition would be good so I could specify was between 8a-6p and when NOT connected to my AP at home.

Arthur2142 · Nov 11, 2011

Do you work from a static location? Maybe your work trigger could be location based.

budwizer · Nov 11, 2011

I travel between 5 offices however will be looking into the possibility of using GPS versus time based.

If you configure to use GPS location and go into a building where there is no signal does it assume your last position until it picks up GPS again? Just wondering if I lose GPS it will end up reverting to a different profile. Going to have to play with that see what I can come up with.

Syntheticfuture · Nov 12, 2011

budwizer said:
I haven't yet figured out how to have my home profile override my work one if I work from home during a weekday. This is where having a NOT condition would be good so I could specify was between 8a-6p and when NOT connected to my AP at home.

I have a similar set up for my home and work, and when I come home for lunch my Home does override my Work. It turns the ringer back on and once I leave my home network it kicks it back off.

Martimus · Nov 12, 2011

According to the rather limited Smart Actions documentation, profiles are cumulative. you can have more than one profile active at the same time. And the more recent profile can override other active profiles.

In other words, if you have a global profile that works from 5 am till midnight and a work profile that runs from 8 to 5, the work profile (when it goes active) settings will supersede any similar settings from the global profile.

I'm going to sit down sometime this weekend with all of my defined profiles and re-write them so they can layer on top of each other. I wish, however, that Motorola had made the triggers more dynamic but I'm sure that'll happen in time...

Martimus · Nov 12, 2011

Decided to re-write my Smart Action profiles this afternoon. I'm actually pleased with the level of granularity I've been able to get. It's not as specific as I'd like, but it's an improvement over what it would be without Smart Actions.

Defaults
=====
Trigger - Timeframe (24x7)
Cellular Data on
Ringtone on (100%)
Background sync - on
Bluetooth - On
GPS - On

Home
====
Trigger - Timeframe (24x7) and Wireless connected to home AP
GPS - Off
Cellular Data - off

Night
====
Trigger - after 10pm and charging
Background sync - off
Ringer - Low volume (20%)
Bluetooth - Off
GPS - Off

Work Sites #1 and #2
==============
Trigger - Timeframe (Monday thru Friday) and WiFi connected to office SSID
Ringer - Vibrate only
Cellular Data - off
GPS - Off

Customer Site #1
===========
Trigger - Timeframe (Monday thru Friday) and WiFi connected to customer SSID
Ringer - Vibrate only
Cellular Data - off
GPS - off
Launch Website - Google (to get customer wireless authentication screen)

MIL's house
=======
Trigger - WiFi connected to family SSID
Ringer - Vibrate only
Cellular Data - off

So far it's working ok but I'll likely spend the next few days tweaking it to decrease the number of triggers/actions and make sure everything works. :cool:

At the moment I'm at my house so both the defaults and home profiles are active. The home profile elements supersede the defaults which is exactly what I wanted them to do. At first I didn't specify a timeframe in the home profile so the default profile superseded the home profile.

azhalvy13 · Nov 12, 2011

This may be a dumb question but...

If you have Cellular data set to 'OFF' will you still get phone calls, text messages, emails, social network updates, etc?

I'm assuming wifi would kick in for this?

jmt9779 · Nov 12, 2011

azhalvy13 said:
This may be a dumb question but...

If you have Cellular data set to 'OFF' will you still get phone calls, text messages, emails, social network updates, etc?

I'm assuming wifi would kick in for this?

someone else will have to confirm but i think that you'll get phone calls and texts but that's it.

Martimus · Nov 12, 2011

azhalvy13 said:
This may be a dumb question but...

If you have Cellular data set to 'OFF' will you still get phone calls, text messages, emails, social network updates, etc?

I'm assuming wifi would kick in for this?

With cellular data turned off it's essentially just disabling 4G/3G. With WiFi enabled, data will go across the WiFi network (if enabled). With cellular data turned off I just got off a 90 minute phone call with the better half (she's over at the MIL's house).

cmatthaios · Nov 13, 2011

This might be a dumb question.

First time I own a motorola and using this Smart Action feature. I have set the rules for location of Work and Home.

I saw you set a default, which would be everywhere else? How do I tell to set that? Leave location blank?

Martimus · Nov 13, 2011

cmatthaios said:
This might be a dumb question.

First time I own a motorola and using this Smart Action feature. I have set the rules for location of Work and Home.

I saw you set a default, which would be everywhere else? How do I tell to set that? Leave location blank?

In order to keep the Defaults trigger from becoming a manual trigger, I set the trigger to a timeframe of 24x7 (I basically created a custom timeframe of all day for every day of the week). If Defaults is considered a manual trigger it would need to be manually activated.

Martimus · Nov 13, 2011

Martimus said:
With cellular data turned off it's essentially just disabling 4G/3G. With WiFi enabled, data will go across the WiFi network (if enabled). With cellular data turned off I just got off a 90 minute phone call with the better half (she's over at the MIL's house).

As a status update, I spent the day today across town at the MIL's house installing a gas stove (oh joy!). On the plus side the new stove works with no gas leaks and only a couple of trips to Ace Hardware for parts... :rolleyes:

It looks like the profiles I placed into Smart Actions seem to be working quite well. The MIL's house is approximately 25 miles away.

I took the phone off the charger at around 9am, worked around the house till 2pm, drove over to the MIL's house, and just got home (it's now 7:30pm). My phone has been disconnected from the charger for almost 10 hours. According to the battery gauge on my phone I just ticked down to 70% battery. So in 10 hours, after several phone calls & a couple of emails & about 5 minutes in the phandroid app, I've used only 30% of my phones battery. I'd say that's a success in my book! :cool:

pm1066 · Nov 13, 2011

You realize you botched a golden opportunity to have the MIL meet an "accident"?

I'm still working my rules out, and since I've been home all weekend, I haven't had a chance to work everything out. I do know I have to keep 4G off at my house, as I'm just on the hairy edge of the range and it burns up the battery in no time.

cmatthaios · Nov 13, 2011

Martimus said:
In order to keep the Defaults trigger from becoming a manual trigger, I set the trigger to a timeframe of 24x7 (I basically created a custom timeframe of all day for every day of the week). If Defaults is considered a manual trigger it would need to be manually activated.

Duh, I just relooked at what you wrote earlier and now I see the 24X7. OK So I just made the default one for myself too. My only question, prior to making this action, I already had a HOME one active with location trigger, GPS off. Once I finished the Default profile, the actions cycles and it still enabled Home. I wonder if thats because of VZW locations?

Hope what I am saying makes sense. lol

Martimus · Nov 13, 2011

cmatthaios said:
Duh, I just relooked at what you wrote earlier and now I see the 24X7. OK So I just made the default one for myself too. My only question, prior to making this action, I already had a HOME one active with location trigger, GPS off. Once I finished the Default profile, the actions cycles and it still enabled Home. I wonder if thats because of VZW locations?

Hope what I am saying makes sense. lol

According to the rather sparse documentation on Smart Actions, rules can be cumulative but actions will defer to the more recent rule.

If your only trigger on the Default profile is 24x7 (no other triggers) , then Default should become active so long is another profile does not trump it. In your case it sounds like Home is superseding Default so I'd look at your triggers on both Home and Default.

codyt · Nov 14, 2011

I found that reading the "help" menu really was useful and did help out with understanding how to properly set rules and triggers and how to trump one trigger over the other. Also something i found out was disableing actions by sliding the action to the left when you have the rule open. ( An example of needing to do this would be turning off your wifi and turning on you data at home incase you router goes down)...

Hope this helps a little.

cmatthaios · Nov 14, 2011

Martimus said:
According to the rather sparse documentation on Smart Actions, rules can be cumulative but actions will defer to the more recent rule.

If your only trigger on the Default profile is 24x7 (no other triggers) , then Default should become active so long is another profile does not trump it. In your case it sounds like Home is superseding Default so I'd look at your triggers on both Home and Default.

OK so scratch what I said yesterday. When I woke up today It showed me couple errors. So I redid everything. I have it set to different profiles by Time rather location. So far so good. I'll update if anything changes.

The Help feature through the app is the same on the manual.

pm1066 · Nov 14, 2011

One thing I like is you don't need "negatives". Example, my Home setup:
Trigger - Wireless connected to home AP
GPS - Off
Cellular Data - off

Simply walking out my front door and getting away from my WiFi causes WiFi to disconnect, which kills the "Home" trigger. "Home" shuts off, and 3G/4G turns on automatically. I'm still trying to figure out the lowest power location method, as when I leave home I don't want WiFi running in the background if it doesn't have to.

I know this really works best with WiFi/Cell data, as one or the other has to be on. I know GPS doesn't turn back on automatically when I leave home, but that's a good thing too as I don't want it running unless I have to.

What's the point of the Defaults setting?

Agrajag · Nov 14, 2011

I saved a ton of battery life with my first foray but essentially setting a rule from 5pm-10am Monday-Friday that, when I'm home, kill GPS, kill Cell Data and kill Bluetooth. It was amazing.... until 10am when I assumed the rule would expire and the rest would go back on. Instead nothing happened.

Do I now understand that to get those back on I'll need essentially an inverse rule?

pm1066 · Nov 14, 2011

Agrajag said:
I saved a ton of battery life with my first foray but essentially setting a rule from 5pm-10am Monday-Friday that, when I'm home, kill GPS, kill Cell Data and kill Bluetooth. It was amazing.... until 10am when I assumed the rule would expire and the rest would go back on. Instead nothing happened.

Do I now understand that to get those back on I'll need essentially an inverse rule?

If your rules are time based, probably so. The only thing I see do the auto switch was wifi to cell data and vice versa.

Funny thing with these rules is sometimes you are just telling the phone to do what it is doing anyway, and the rule expiring doesn't actually change anything.

One thing I'm really happy with is last night I didn't lose any battery based upon my overnight rules, which basically shut everything down overnight while I was asleep without the phone charging.

Also I'm gonna use the rule sets for being lazy. Like setting up something that every time I turn GPS on it automatically starts maps.

spike4405@yahoo.com · Nov 14, 2011

I don't understand how you guys get such good battery life. I've replicated the settings that are posted and battery useage is still terrible. Unpluged at @ 7am and buy 2pm i'am at 45% and have not used the phone for anything except checking some email and thats not even reading them just checking.

Martimus · Nov 14, 2011

pm1066 said:
One thing I like is you don't need "negatives". Example, my Home setup:
Trigger - Wireless connected to home AP
GPS - Off
Cellular Data - off

Simply walking out my front door and getting away from my WiFi causes WiFi to disconnect, which kills the "Home" trigger. "Home" shuts off, and 3G/4G turns on automatically. I'm still trying to figure out the lowest power location method, as when I leave home I don't want WiFi running in the background if it doesn't have to.

I know this really works best with WiFi/Cell data, as one or the other has to be on. I know GPS doesn't turn back on automatically when I leave home, but that's a good thing too as I don't want it running unless I have to.

What's the point of the Defaults setting?

For me it's for flexibility... I want to be able to setup multiple default profiles (I.e., weekdays, weekends, vacations, etc.)

cereal killer · Nov 14, 2011

spike4405@yahoo.com said:
I don't understand how you guys get such good battery life. I've replicated the settings that are posted and battery useage is still terrible. Unpluged at @ 7am and buy 2pm i'am at 45% and have not used the phone for anything except checking some email and thats not even reading them just checking.

Go into Settings/Battery info and see what is using the most battery. After list all the apps you have installed from the market.

Report back

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