Lights and switches shortcut:request for feature

Apps & Clients Features & Feedback
1

As I get more dimmers integrated into my system and group them in the “lights and switches”; I think it would be nice to have the ability to dim these lights from the “lights and switches” area. Perhaps have a tile switch with a slider under it.

Right now if I want to dim the lights I have to go into each individual light in the things screen and dim them. I now I can use the “dim with me app” but that would still require me to go into the things to dim a light.

How hard would it be to do this?

Is it possible to do it at all?

thanks
Chuck

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2

It’s definitely possible, but SmartThings has a few higher priority things at back end, and are concentrating on speed of Mobile App, it seems (though exact new feature list and road map not released).

And things run into complications that we don’t always think of. If you have different types of light bulbs (wattage, brand, led vs incandescent) in the same Group, they respond differently to the same dimmer level setting… Eg, if you want all the lights to look similar brightness, then your 100 Watt bulbs need a lower brightness level than your 60 Watts in the same Group.

I’ve requested that Groups have much more power including allowing tiles and subtiles to be in multiple Groups and dimming, labels, etc., but it’s good for ST to hear these requests from multiple Community members.

3

What kind of mobile device do you have? eg. iOS/Android?

4

I have both IOS and Android. My phones are all IOS and my tablets are Android.

5

This has been my experience completely! I have Hue bulbs, strips, and disc lights, Wink flood and regular, and other LED lights on dimmer switches… 100% and 0% are the only two that match up - even in the same family of lights. I have been working on a “room” device-type and configuration app that will “capture” the current level, hue, saturation for each of the devices configured in the App - then via M1, M2, M3 (memory buttons in the device-type) it will put them back to where they were saved. This is the only way I have been able to figure out how to do this.

The other option I have that we use in the house in three different places (front room, bathroom, and bedroom) is a similar app that has what I can on-on and off-off where when the switch is in the “on” position and you press “up / on” again and again it cycles through 10% brightness changes 20%-100% (for a group of lights) and the off-off turns off a group of lights when pressed again (this is different then “double-tap”) If this is of use I will clean it up and make available on GitHub sometime in the next few days

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6

These are both great SmartApp ideas!

The first (current level capture) was implemented somewhat by @wackware, in “Scene Machine”, and I run a variation on it and have been working on publishing some sort of enhanced version. – I think you’ll beat me to it :stuck_out_tongue:.

The second (cycle for brightness) is also something I’ve been working on applying to a multi-button remote like the Aeon Minimote, applying buttons 3 and 4 as brightness up and down; but that remote is very slow to respond (not so bad when just turning on a light, but adjusting the brightness is several presses …).

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