OK so I installed 16’ of RGBWW LED lighting beneath my kitchen cabinets; and connected it without any troubles to my Power supply and Fibaro RGBW controller. Smartthings Immediately associated the Proper controls to it, so I can successfully control intensity of White, of RGB, adjust the color wheel, and use all of the preset buttons (ie Red, White, “Police”, “Storm”, etc). When activated manually using my phone, Everything works perfectly (well, the “fire” is a bit green but thats not a big deal).
My question, is how on earth to I schedule it to come on or initiate these presets using triggers??
I THOUGHT I could use Marketplace > Lights & Switches > “Smart Lights” because it seems to ask all of the right questions, and give me almost all of the same options as the Manual Control, however nothing actually works properly. Most the time my little scheduled “tests” just seem to result in a whole lot of ‘nothing’ happening.
I can find lots of threads here about getting the controls to work but I think my problem has to do with automation… Maybe I am going about it all wrong. Any advice?
The Fibaro RGBW controller is an unusual device because it is a controller in itself. You will store different patterns in it, I think it’s up to five different ones. Those are your presets. ( and everyone agrees “fire” is too green. )
I think most community members have written their own smart apps to automate the use of the particular patterns that they have selected.
That said, @Motley did write a more general purpose smart app which allows you to assign any one of your five patterns to a virtual switch. So you select the patterns that you want in the fibaro controller, then that smart app lets you assign each pattern to a switch. Once you have that set up, then you will be able to automate the use of those switches.
I don’t Think there’s a general author thread for The smartapp, I think it’s just discussed in the device handler thread
Thank JDRoberts,
Admittedly I am still fuzzy on the terminology in this ecosystem (ie spartapps vs handlers etc). Where woul I go do read-up on installing these custom smartapps?
Im hoping to simply turn the “White” on to 100% at sunset, and then later dim it down to 30% at 10pm. (the colors and light effects are neat but I can bring those up by hand when I want geek-cred among my friends
Is Motleys code the best way to accomplish this scheduled white lighting?
@Motley @twack
Hey guys,
Would I be correct to say that the native “Smart Lights” app has no idea how to properly control the Fibaro?
I installed my Fibaro to Smart things and it appears to have given me @twack 's controller SmartApp, which works great as a handheld remote. However when I try to schedule anything by triggers or time using the integrated lighting scheduler in “Smart Lights”, nothing really happens at all. Am I doing something wrong or is this what everyone sees?
As a plan-B I also Followed @JDRoberts suggestion and set up several virtual switches and installed @Motley’s “Fibaro Pattern Trigger” only to learn (again, please correct me if I am wrong) that it seems to be capable of only a single preset no matter how many switches you make (For example, once I assign the Fibaro to a Virtual switch (lets say “police”) I can no longer select that same fibaro on a different switch (lets say “daylight”). (Maybe ST prevents a single device be used by multiple switches?)
At the end of the day, I am really hoping to simply turn on pure white @100% at 5pm, then maybe 30% blue at 10pm, then maybe use the “police” preset in the event an alarm is triggered. Is this even possible? If so, how would I go abount it (ive read through all of the Fibaro thread posts (there are alot!) and I didn’t see any specific solutions in there for scheduling)
Yes to all of the above, except that I think you would just have to install @Motley’s smartapp once for each preset and then it should work. That’s typical of smartapps, nothing to do with the Fibaro, there are a lot of smartapps where you end up with multiple installs just to get everything working. The exception is smartapps like Smart Lighting or Core which have a “parent/child” structure (SmartThings terminology) where you only have to install the parent once and then it can create multiple children.
But I’m just guessing, because I rely on text to speech I can’t read the code and I haven’t tried that smartapp myself. So I would ask in the Fibaro thread and someone there should know for sure.
Thanks for the tip, Il repost this over on the main Fibaro thread since most subscribers to that thread have probably been going at it with this device for a while.
OH, and Thanks for the suggestion @JDRoberts, il try installing a couple of additional instances of the pattern picker tonight to see if that lets me set up multiple switches.
@Nocturn did you have any joy trying to get any sense out of the Fibaro RGBW controller?
I’ve spent the best part of the day trying and have been unsuccessful. I’ve tried the native Smart Lighting app, @Motley smart app and coRe. I’m looking at the same as you for the kitchen white led strip, 100% In the morning, then 40 at night. I’ve had some triggers turning on the RGBW in the app, but the light doesn’t come on, and lots of nothing happening, tried turn on at set time and set level, trigger with motion, I think the module itself is the problem.
I use Core to control mine. It works fine. I have one controlled by multiple motion detectors in an under cabinet lighting scenario (one Core piston). Another uses core to turn on and off at different times but also controlled by a Minimote to set the different preset patterns (or manual control on/off). I have a third controlling outdoor LED strips that is set to different colors based on calendar events and a Core piston.
Hello all smartthings help. will this FIBARO controller fade red and green like for Christmas if it does how do i do it … All I have is a color wheel and a couple of slide bars
Have you found a solution for this yet? I’m finally getting my LED strip lighting up outside, but only know how to use the presets in the auto-detected app (circle of colors, brightness, and a few presents). Would love a Christmas preset for Red/Green/White or something.
well I did find something that works with led strips that are WS2811
addressable. it is a wifi-spi controller. I use a smartthings plug in
device and it turns the power on and off to the wifi-spi controller
)
(And thanks in advance for your time)