Virtual Switch to turn on/off Multiple Lights Based on IFTTT Trigger Event?

I’m not sure where to post this (and this is my first post), but I’ve looked everywhere and haven’t found a clear solution to this:

What I am wanting to do is to create a virtual switch that contains multiple physical z-wave light switches. This virtual switch would need to be seen in IFTTT. I would then use IFTTT to trigger this group of lights to turn off when another event handler in IFTTT happens.

I don’t know if this would be a Device, SmartApp, or what. I’m a super novice nubie at this, so I would need pretty clear instructions.

Create a virtual on/off tile using the developer’s IDE and then add the Big Switch SmartApp from the mobile app.

Thank you Nick. I’ve got it now.

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I’m trying to do something similar, and haven’t gotten it yet. Could you share what you did?

Note: The following assumes you have already setup IFTTT within SmartThings.

Step 1 - Use the SmartThings IDE to add a virtual switch tile.


  • In the IDE go to “My Devices
  • Click the “+ New Device” button
  • On the “Create Device” screen, give it a name (e.g. “Master
    Switch”), a device network ID (e.g. “MasterSwitch”), set the Type to
    "On/Off Button Tile" and set the Location to the appropriate
    location from the drop down list, then click the “Create” button.

Step 2 - Allow IFTTT to use the new virtual switch


  • In the SmartThings app on your phone, from the Dashboard go to
    "SmartThings Internal" and tap the IFTTT tile.
  • When the IFTTT app opens, open the “Which Switches” option and
    tick the entry against the virtual switch you created in step 1.

Step 3 - Connect your virtual switch to your real switches


  • In the SmartThings app on your phone, in the dashboard, scroll all
    the way to the button and press the “+” button.
  • At the top, scroll the horizontal list of options (which starts with
    "Things") across to “More” In the list below, select
    "Convenience"
  • Scroll down to find and then select the “The Big Switch” SmartApp
    (the description reads “Turn on and off a collection of lights based
    on the state of a specific switch”
    ).
  • Click the “Install” button
  • For the “Where?” setting, select the virtual switch you created
    in Step 1
  • Scroll down and set the rest of the options as you see fit (i.e. set
    which switches should be turned on or off, etc., when the Master
    switch is turned on, etc.).

That’s it - you now have a virtual switch which is visible in your IFTTT channel which, when turned on, will cause your selected real switches (or other virtual switches…) to turn on or off as you see fit.

There is, though, one big gotcha - there can be significant latency in IFTTT - it can take up to fifteen minutes between the triggering event and IFTTT then turning on your switch. Unfortunately this is just the way IFTTT works; there’s nothing you can do about it if you’re going to use IFTTT.

13 Likes

Thank you! I’d created the virtual switch but couldn’t figure out how to make it show up in ifttt. I was missing step #2. Much appreciation!

This worked – is there an equivalent for level and colors rather than just on/off? (I ignored the IFTTT – just use it a as a local control)

Thanks for this. I used this to connect to a WeMo Insight, which doesn’t directly connect to smartthings, so I had to go through IFTTT. The latency is surprisingly not bad. There’s maybe a 5 second delay. Wondering if the latency varies between IFTTT channels.

Once again I find the idea that turning on and off my lights depends on IFTF servers in Tierra del Fuego strange. (OK, maybe not Tierra del Fuego but how would I know)?

You should be able to do the same thing as far as one switch controlling others without IFTTT through the SmartThings smartapp The Big Switch as described above.

So I’m assuming the original poster had some trigger that was only available to them through IFTTT.

If you weren’t using IFTTT to begin with, you wouldn’t need to add it into the mix for most use cases.

I do not use IFTTT for the reasons I cited. But using the SmartThings virtual switch is only a tad better since it to runs on a server who knows where. In fact I now need to figure out why it started giving me
"Error “The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error.” getting device information"

Is there any way to get IFTTT to turn off your Virtual Switch 5 minutes later after you tell google home to turn off your virtual switch
Thanks
Rick