What I like most about this EZMultiPli is that I think I can use it as a basic SmartThings status indicator – red for alarm armed, green for not, and other colors in between. It’s other capabilities don’t add much when used in that role, except for maybe the motion detection fits with being armed.
So I like the product, and I’ll probably buy more to put near my home’s alarmed doors, but I’m having trouble making sense of its LED color controls within the SmartThings environment. Could I be seeing some kind of software bug defect or some kind of hardware (manufacturing or design) defect, or am I doing something wrong with using it?
Let me explain: In the Device Handler, I’m offered a plain white on-off button control for the LED but also a color wheel icon within which there are 11 color “on” buttons – 4 shades of white and 7 others. But something seems a little off. The whites all look the same to me (I didn’t try to tell them apart). Yellow, Red, Green, and Pink make the LED glow the color I’d expect, so that’s good (very good because red, green, and yellow are the most important colors). But pressing Orange gives a yellow light, Purple gives hot pink, and Blue gives light aqua. There’s also a sliding control that seemed like it could offer other colors but I never got that to work as reliably as the color buttons.
Then there’s also SmartApps. The LED can be used via automation. The SmartThings SmartApp that made the most sense to me for this was the one under Lights & Switches called “Smart Lights”. I tell the App I want to control the EZMultiPli, that I want to “Turn On & Set Color” and I get to pick a color and a dimmer level, doing this when Mode Changes to a particular mode (e.g., Home, Away, etc.). For this, I’m offered 4 whites (again, I didn’t try to distinguish them) and 7 colors. The Red, Green, Blue (strong blue), Yellow (greenish-yellow), and Pink (hot pink) were all pretty good. But Orange made the LED glow yellow (greenish-yellow), and Purple made it glow hot pink (the same as the Pink option). I’m confused. I would’ve liked Orange to look orange and purple to look purple. Oh, and I’m not sure the dimmer control did anything – I tried a couple at 80%, 100%, and 20%, but for the couple I tried didn’t seem to make any difference.
I’d appreciate some help getting the last couple of colors to show up as their names say, or an explanation for why I’m having so much trouble with a couple of them.
Best regards,
Craig in PA