Aeon Minimote and scenes help

I have a Minimote and am basically using it as a “fob” to arm/disarm SHM.

I can’t find a FAQ that explains what “scenes” are and how/what I could do with them with the Minimote. I would appreciate some direction here and/or point me to a discussion/FAQ thread. If anyone has some simple examples that would be great as well.

Thanks

Smartthings doesn’t actually use the term scenes, except specifically for the echo integration because they use the term scenes.

But in home automation in general, A scene usually meant that you could define settings for multiple devices and then have them all go to their setting at the same time.

Scenes vs Groups

It’s different from just grouping devices.

If you group devices in this context, it means the devices will all come on at the same time and all go off at the same time.

But with a scene, you might have all kinds of different things happen. The usual example is “movie night.” You could have the lights dim to 50% in the hallway, go off all together in the living room, have the television come on and change to Netflix, and maybe have the front door lock.

Routines

The official simple feature for scenes are SmartThings “routines.” but there are actually a whole bunch of different ways to set up and control a set of devices in SmartThings.

And once you have a scene set up, you can trigger it a whole bunch of different ways. Maybe based on a particular person coming home. Maybe based on everyone leaving. Maybe time of day. Maybe detecting weight on a pressure sensor on the couch. :sunglasses:

So the basic concept of scene is just “make different devices do different things all with one command.”

And one way might be by pressing a particular button on a particular minimote.

Button Controllers

Smartthings calls devices like the minimote a “button controller.” So you will see that the official “smart lighting” feature, routines, and a number of smart apps may have the option to run based on a “button press.”

If we’re just talking about lights and switches, just use the smart lighting feature. It already has minimote support built-in.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205949776-How-to-create-lighting-automations-with-Smart-Lights

Going beyond just lights

Here’s more on how you do device control in SmartThings:

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I have a question about the Aeon Minimote buttons and not sure this is the correct place to ask. There are 4 buttons under the slider; 3 are labeled (plus, minus, join) but the bottom left is an unlabeled button. What does it do? Can this be programmed?

Those are for administrative purposes. Adding a new device to the network, associating two devices, etc. They are not programmable. See the user guide.