It’s a good question, and re-reading the thread I realise it’s not really clear so I will try and spell out the 3 ways the driver can be used below
Option 1. Smartthings In control
- Configure each button press in smartthings to do something e.g turn on a light
- You configure the button presses on the main screen of the driver, or within automations
- You can control any kind of device zigbee, lan virtual etc etc
- You don’t need use the group preference in settings, just ignore that it exists
- It operates locally on your hub, if the device you are controlling is also local
- When you press a button, the remote sends a message to your hub, the hub then executes what ever automations are set to trigger
Option 2. Group Bindings
- Configure each remote control and light within the same group by using the settings
- You can only control zigbee devices that also support the group feature (see @Mariano_Colmenarejo lightbulb driver above)
- You put your lights and remote in the same group
- It operates locally (in fact when using groups they will continue to work even when the hub gets turned off)
- When you press a button, the remote sends a message directly to your light, the light has to know how to understand that message (it also sends the same message to the hub)
- You have less flexibility because not all button presses will trigger actions on the bulb (for styrbar with ikea lights, power on, power off, dim up and dim down work)
- You get native dimming capability (this is impossible locally on smartthings using opt 1)
- Groups can support multiple lights - So I have mine control a set of 5 GU10 lights in my ceiling - the lights are controlled in unison as a group so they come on, go off, dim and brighten as a group
Option 3. Best Of Both
- You can combine option 1 and 2 because messages go to both the group and the hub
- This would allow you to have dimmer controls going directly to the bulb using groups, but left and right controls triggering automations within ST
- It is possible to also perform action on the on/off or held commands within smartthings whilst also bound to a group (an example would be you want dimming capability for you main light, but an on click to turn on the main light and a plug in lamp) This should work but I haven’t tried it.