Thanks. Good luck with your treatments!
I now have a presence sensor working and I’m currently using ST as a presence sensor box. I have an app installed that’s sending presence notifications to my existing controller. I may use the ST hub for more in the future, but until it supports scenes it’ll be a purely secondary controller.
Thanks for your help, everyone.
Hey Matt, I was searching the forums for scene support and ran across this thread, which I’ve read with interest…scene support is the biggest gaping hole in ST and it nearly drove me to give up the whole system too. I still haven’t found a great solution using just ST, so I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have to implement another controller.
You’ve referenced your “other” system/controller several times in this thread…can you elaborate on what hardware/software that is, and how you have it interfacing with the ST hub? Do you have ST setup as a secondary controller in your zwave network? I’ve heard it doesn’t play very nicely like that.
The Scene-Machine (or some variant of your nifty Code @wackware) should be a standard SmartApp by now.
The concept of a lighting scene (or “mood” as some systems call it), such that a set of lights is turned on to INDIVIDUAL pre-set dimmer levels for a certain activity (movie, romance, wake-up), is ubiquitous in automated lighting systems.
Actually, it is the SINGLE automated function that lighting centric HA systems are based upon (e.g., Lutron, HUE, GE Z-Wave master remotes, etc.).
I made a variant of the scene-machine SmartApp and I use it extensively … and nearly every day.
Frankly, I’d like to license your baseline code and then put a version in the SmartApp marketplace, when such a thing is created; though, as I said, it should be a fundamental part of SmartThings anyway, perhaps with a custom section in the GUI.
…CP (Terry).
@rogersmj: I’m pretty happy with “scene/mood” support using a customized version of @wackware’s Scene-Machine SmartApp. There’s room for enhancements with I’m experimenting with.
Either in this thread or in private message, I’d love to know more about what you’re looking for so I can share my experience as to whether or not SmartThings is currently a good solution.
…CP (Terry).
I tried Scene-Machine quite awhile ago, and while it looks cool it didn’t really achieve what I wanted – namely, being able to trigger a scene from a wall switch. It drives me nuts that ST doesn’t really work with any scene controllers.
My use case, in the basement for example, is this: someone walks into the basement, and a default set of lights turn on at a certain brightness. This is the lighting for casual TV viewing – soft but not too dark. But what if I want to play pool or darts (full lighting) or watch a movie (much lower lighting)? I have no way of doing this now unless I (a) fiddle with all the switches manually (sucks), (b) pull out my SmartThings app and use something like Scene Machine (not ever, ever going to happen), or © buy an expensive in-wall scene controller that can control and command all the scenes itself.
The problem (as I understand it) with option © – even though a convenient in-wall control is what I want – is that those things generally don’t talk to SmartThings, so if ST is unaware of their settings, the next time the motion sensor is triggered that had originally set the lights to their “default”, it will revert them to their default. Additionally, if I wanted to trigger some of these other scenes via automation, as I understand it there would be no way to do that from SmartThings since it can’t talk to the scene controller switch.
I need physical controls that are wall mounted and convenient when I need to manually trigger a scene. I never, ever want to touch the app to perform daily actions, and I can’t rely on automation sensors for everything because there’s no way for those sensors to tell if I want to watch a movie or play pool or whatever other activity in the same room.
It’s not wall mounted, but the Aeon Minimote works quite well as a scene selector. Eight scenes from four buttons. It would work perfectly for the scenario you describe. I have implemented “scenes” triggered by Z-Wave wall dimmers (e.g., when there are four of them that control a single room), but they don’t work as well as either motion triggered scenes or Minimote triggered scenes due to lag time with Z-Wave. Most of my rooms like that respond differently to different Modes (bright during the day, 50% in the evening, dim at night). We now have several Minimotes around the house, and my wife knows how to use hers. You should at least give it a try…
Yeah, stuff like this does tend to start getting complex fast… I can think of a handful of ways to accomplish what you’re looking for, sure it all involves write some custom SmartApps and some hardware… though I think it could be done with simple z-wave switches vs. a specific controller.
Using your situation above:
** IF Motion: Then turn on lights dim unless I specify “game mode” then light full bright
Here’s how I would attack it: Motion sensor is in the stairway leading to the basement. If motion is detected, it turns on a virtual tile. Next you have a SmartApp that is designed to run when it see the Virtual Tile turn on. The first thing it does is checks to see if a given switch is on.
This switch will be an ordinary Z-wave light switch that is NOT hooked to any load… just line coming in, and neutral. No load wire.
If the switch is off (default position), the program runs the default set of instructions: Turn on lights 1,2, and 3 at 45%, 60%, and 50% respectively. However, if the switch is on, then we run the alternate set of instructions: Turn on lights 1, 2, and 3 at full brightness.
So essentially the Motion Sensor is the trigger to do something. Then your ordinary Z-wave switch is the toggle telling it to either run one set or instructions, or run a different set of instructions.
There would, of course, be some details to be worked out: For example we need the SmartApp to trigger when it sees that Toggle switch turn on or off. We also need to work out how you want to turn off lights (via a switch? automatically when motion stops?) as well as whether you want the toggle to remember what state it’s in (TV mode or Game mode) or just default back to TV mode.
So, some details, but certainly do able… I don’t think it would be even that terrible complex of an App to write.
It’s also possible that this might be able to be configured even better with an Aeon 4-button remote. I don’t have one of these and have never written an app for it, so I don’t know how it would work exactly, but I envision you’d have a different mode for each button: TV mode, Game mode, “Romantic mode”, off. You’d have the motion sensor still be your trigger to turn on, and probably set it up so it triggers “TV mode” by default, but then each of the other four modes could be triggers easily with a button on the remote.
I do this now with a SmartApp that appends state info:
if (!state.next) {
state.next = 0
}
def theCOM = HAMBcommandOn + state.next
doHAMB(theCOM)
if (state.next == rotateSFX - 1) {
state.next = 0
} else {
state.next = state.next + 1
}
Now I am using HAM Bridge to actually load the scenes from server side scripts, but you could create an app that just has a different event handler for each scene (each with its own set of inputs), and call those handlers using the above logic.
The way it works is one push = scene 1, another = scene 2, another scene 3, another back to scene 1 (this if rotateSFX has the value ‘3’ in it).
Great to see the ideas and solutions showing up here.
I’d wait a bit too see what the range and variety of ways the Dev community has come up with before narrowing down.
Why don’t you try this:
It’s battery powered and can be mounted on the wall. You can create a scene for each button (up to 12 scenes). It works independently from SmartThings hub, which may be good or bad depending on your needs. Personally, I think it’s great because even if SmartThings is hosed, this thing will still work. It even has a built-in timer.
Definitely the type of controller that I would like to see made compatible with SmartThings (and it is a lot like the GE Remotes that are available cheaply on eBay, etc.). If this works like the GE Remote, then in can be added as a “secondary Z-Wave controller” – but that’s the catch: Z-Wave only.
My home is now starting to incorporate ZigBee light bulbs (HUE and GE Link). This controller can’t control them or make them a part of a Scene.
He-he, that’s what happens when you start chasing every new gadget and technology on the market. I’m being conservative and try to stick with Z-Wave as a backbone of my HA. I think it pays off. Yes, ST allows you to integrate multiple technologies and makes it easy to get carried away, but the day ST hits another system outage you realize that after spending hundreds or even thousands dollars on all these gadgets, you end up wandering in total darkness.
That’s pretty much what I did tinkering with your initial code. Link a Scene instance to Physical or Virtual button or switch so that it is a Tile that can be more easily arranged in the GUI.
Recording Things of many types of capability gives this a lot of potential, though starting with lights (on, of, dim, color) is a good baseline as that is what scenes are in existing lighting systems.
One feature request: Optionally save the settings of all affected things AT EXECUTION TIME and restore them with an “end Scene” button or another App… A little tricky, since various scenarios could take place.
I sure wish Minimotes were cheaper.
Ditto… Of course a Scene can be “Turned Off”… It implies returning the State of the list of Things to the state they were in at time Scene “Turned On”.
This is not always desirable behavior… So maybe activation of another scene with the same devices automatically resets the first scene to soft-off.
I am very excited by this Thread!
Finally there’s a substantive discussion of a concept of state capture / restore that I’ve had to simplify into calling “scenes” because “scenes / moods” are basic functions of simple lighting automation systems…
I like to think I’m uniquely brilliant, but my thoughts that tying events (eg button press, mode change, door open, etc.) to Scene activation (and stack push / pop restore) instead of turning on a specific light at an input dim level (geesh, if we’re lucky…) has been driving me nutz… And now I see folks who have the same concept in mind.
Scenes are both simple and EXTREMELY useful and should be integral.
So should a scene mimic a ST device more then an ST app? Have on/off from its main tile? Have record/update and choose devices from the detail tiles?
I’m having trouble with the off concept that you touched on. To me off happens anytime you adjust any device away from the scene settings. Not an undo or reset to what it was before scene run.
I also don’t like the idea of “turning off a scene” and will stick to my original definition:
A scene is simply a collection of captured states of all devices included in a scene. It cannot be “undone”, but it can be replaced with another scene.
Within SmartThings taxonomy, a scene should be either a new object type or a “device” object with three commands: “add device”, “remove device” and “activate”. This would require nesting of device objects, of course.
Ideally, each device would have an “Add to a Scene” tile in its “Details” page, which would bring up a list of scenes (with a option of creating a new scene) and allow you to record current device state into selected scenes.
In thinking about this some more I think that scenes are just like a hello home action. It just needs to be built in a little better. You could follow similar steps like:
Now anytime you wanted to run the scene, you just use a hello home dialog.