Here is my problem.
I currently have have 5 lights that are controlled through smartthings in my living room. i have used scenes to set these lights at various states depending on what we want. Currently have 4 scenes.
Bright - Light1=100, Light2=100, Light3=100, Light4=100, Light5=100
Dim - Light1=0, Light2=60, Light3=60, Light4=0, Light5=15
Movie = Light1=0, Light2=27, Light3=33, Light4=0, Light5=7
Dark = Light1=0, Light2=0, Light3=0, Light4=0, Light5=0
Until now we have controlled these lights using alexa. My wife does not like alexa and to her point, alexa’s comprehension and response is spotty at best. To try and maintain the smart lighting yet simplify its use, and also make sure we can use the lights when the internet is down, i have purchased a GE toggle switch. i would like this toggle switch to function as the master switch.
Desired function is, If the switch is turned on i want scene bright to activate and if the switch is turn off i want dark to be activated (i.e. all lights off).
What i have found is that if you use alexa to turn on a scene, therefore bypassing the switch you can no longer use the switch to turn off the lights because the switch was never in the on state. is there a way for smartthings to know if you press on or off without ever being in a previous state?
My current solution for this is the following.
I have created routines which call the various scenes which i previously used. These routines also do 2 additional things. 1) they set the hub state to a state i named “limit” 2) they turn on the wall switch
turning on the wall switch in each routine proved to have an adverse effect, since i used a routine to activate scene bright when the wall switch was triggered. This meant that any time you activated any of the other routines “bright” would inadvertently get activated at the step when the wall switch was turned on.
This is why i also had each routine change the state of the hub to “limit”. I used this state to ““limit”” what the wall switch does. since the hub is only in the limit state when “dim” or “dark” routine is run, i put an exclusion in the wall switch routine that says only active scene “bright” when not in state “limit”.
with this i can use the routines to activate the desired scenes with alexa and change the state of the switch to on. when the switch turns on it only activates “bright” if no other scene is already activated. although clumsy this seems to work. the issue i see with it is that if i want to implement similar logic to other rooms with multiple lights i will run into the problem that the hub can only be in one state at a time which wont allow for multiple simultaneous control of each room.
any thoughts would be much appreciated.
