Minimote V1

General Discussion
1

Hello,

I’m a relative newbie to ST. I have the hub set up and controlling some lights and switches. I recently got a Minimote V1 to turn some of the lights on and off, after I updated the firmware.

I think that because I have Z-Wave dimmers and switches that I can control them directly with the Minimote, by including them. Does this work? Can I have both ST control and Minimote control?

The only reason I want direct Minimote control, is to simplify the dimming process, which is not clean thru the hub. If I understand the minimote correctly, it looks like I can have dimming, all lights on/off outside the hub control.

How would I do this and not mess up what I have now?

2

It would probably serve you best to set up a rule associating the lights with the Minimote, basically you would set up scenes to be turned on and off by the remote.

Associating the device directly with the Minimote causes communication issues with the device updating to the hub. Basically, if you then a light inn with the Minimote, the hub will not know it is on. Which will adversely affect your automatons.

You can not dim with the Minimote. You have two choices for each button, press and long press. Both act as an on/off, that is it. You can have up to eight actions per Minimote.

@JDRoberts can give you some really great information on the Minimote and its workings.

3

Thank you for the helpful feedback. It makes perfect sense to NOT couple my devices directly to the Minimote.

I have created a way to dim the lights by associating a “held” button with a “Routine”. It dims by a fixed percentage (assuming the lights were above that percentage before dimming). This works OK for certain lights, I can live with that.

Am I correct in your opinion doing it this way? I am still a little confused by the terms that ST uses and what contributors use. I understood that ST does not really have a scene function. Is the Routine function the catch all for these type of functions? Thank you.

4

You’re right that ST does not have a scenes function and that routines is a sort of catch some for ST… It’s rather limited.

You should give rule machine a try

And get help with it here…