Icon shortcut to turn a group on

I found this searching the forums.

It claims that you can do this using “Smart Lights” I do not see that option in “Smart Lights”

My goal is to create one icon to turn on and off 9 Z-Wave boxes for Christmas lights.

[quote=“Judgless, post:1, topic:29540”]
It claims that you can do this using “Smart Lights” I do not see that option in “Smart Lights” [/quote]
I think that statement conceived of a scenario where multiple lights could be controlled from a single physical switch that had no electrical or location relationship to the others. If that fits your need, then you can do it now. It will become obvious as you step through the Smartapp configuration. However, if you’re looking for a totally remote 1-button access to everything, you’ll need either a Minimote or a virtual switch. There’s even a virtual Minimote available! Here’s the setup screen using a virtual switch:


Scrolling further down will reveal an option to “Turn off as well,” and optional time/day/mode restrictions.

The only thing analogous to the v1 groups is “Rooms” in the v2 mobile app.

Actually, what it says is:

pretty much everything below this line will no longer apply once you do you have the new mobile app version

The method you mention came from the description from the old version of the mobile app that no longer is available.

It can still be done, but not as easily.

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Is there a tutorial somewhere?

Not specifically, depends on exactly what you want to set up. These are the basic options.

One) have eight of the holiday lights do what ever the ninth holiday light does. That way you can just go into the official smart things mobile app and when you toggle that master light on and off the others will go on and off. That just requires using smart lights as @Mr_Lucky mentioned. So that’s the easiest way.

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

Two) put all nine of the lights into a routine that goes on. And into a second routine that goes off. That’s not a toggle, but it’s a pretty quick two button option. Again you can do that through the official mobile app. The advantage this has over smart lights is that you can then activate the routine in a number of other ways after it’s been created.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205956706-How-to-create-automations-with-Routines

Three) once you have the routines set up from option two, you can also associate those with widgets. Again you would have one for on and one for off. But you could have those widgets appear on your phone. And again you can use the official SmartThings mobile app widgets option for it. Or you could use one of the third-party options. Some of the third-party options also have the ability to set up a toggle widget so then you only need one widget for either on or off, but you’d have to check the details for each one. There’s a widgets article in the community created wiki, that would be a good place to start if you’re interested in widgets.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Widgets

  1. there’s a new super smartapp developed by the community called rule machine which has a lot of options I haven’t even looked at yet. No widgets though. So it might give you what you need it just depends exactly how you want to use it. But for that one you would need to install custom code.

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So you can see there’s a lot of different ways to do things. It really comes down to how convenient you want the control to be.

In the older version of the official app shortcut groups, it was basically the same as what I’ve put for one above here. You would open the mobile app, go to the thing screen, and toggle that one group icon. So if that’s all you need, you just do it with smart lights. :sunglasses:

Are you looking to have a quick and easy to access shortcut/widget on your mobile device? If so, which mobile OS are you using (eg. Android, iOS, etc)?

I am on Android. I am ok with an icon in the Smartthing Android App. I was able to get things working but I still looking for a cleaner solution. I had create a virtual switch using the web interface and attached it to that using a smart app.

I would think a lot of people would like to press one short cut icon to turn on all the outside lights or all there Christmas lights. It is not automation if you have to press 9 icons to turn on all your outside lights.

If you already have a Routine setup that turns on all of your devices, you can setup a widget on your Android homescreen to activate that Routine. Using SharpTools, you can create a simple 1x1 widget on your homescreen using the A Phrase widget which can trigger any of your routines.

And if you already have a virtual switch setup that is turning your desired lights on and off (when the virtual switch is flipped), you could use the A Thing widget to toggle your virtual switch.

PS. As JD mentioned, there are other solutions like using the built-in SmartThings Routine Widget, but it’s a pretty big monstrosity to have on your homescreen if all you want to do is trigger a single action. I’m the developer of SharpTools though, so I might be a bit biased. :wink:

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