Migrating from Revolv to ST V2 and having a little confusion getting my setup programmed. Here’s a scenario that I believe would answer my needs. Advice appreciated!
At 5PM every night, I have the following occur:
6 dimmer lights turn on. Each light is set to its own specified brightness %
4 hue bulbs turn on. Each is set to it’s own color and brightness %
I have similiar events happen several times during the day with different sets of lights. I’ve tried to accomplish this using Routines, but there is only a universal brightness % for the entire routine.
The answer I’ve come up with seems very painful … a separate custom “SmartLights” for each light and for each change. This would mean Id have 2-3 of these per light = 40-50 smartapps! There must be a better solution … revolv had something that was: at 5pm turn light 1 to 50%, light 2 to 80%, etc etc
I cannot think of any other way except to write your own app. Most of the predefined apps that I’ve seen, you can only set one dim level for a set of lights (bulbs or switches).
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
4
Welcome to SmartThings!
The good news is there are some very good scene / lighting control SmartApps developed and shared by the Community here on the forum.
Eventually SmartThings will get it right and make those SmartApps obsolete, … perhaps. Dunno. Someday. Well – it’s hard to be optimistic when ST has ignored? deferred? denied? the obvious for so long.
Don’t know what superState app is, but the second one you can easily create with a routine, for the first action you run into the multi dimming issue.
For the first, you can also create a routine to lock door and turn switches on, and then go behind and create actions for individual dim levels, OR create your own app.
It is basically that easy, however the available functions are more granular. You can use Routines to do all of this, which can be set to run automatically at various times, including sunrise and sunset (with offsets). The only rub is that each routine can only support one dimmer level. So if you have multiple dimmer levels, you’d need separate routines for each. That’s not a big deal – you’d just group together all of your 100% lights in one Routine, all of you 50% lights in another, etc. assuming that all of those would be switched based on the same automatic criteria (e.g., at sunset).
You second example can be done by a single Routine.
Thanks all, my examples were not fully fleshed. Essentially ALL of my lights are pendants or ceiling cans/spots and on dimmer switches. I have 15 dimmer switches and the wife likes them lit differently % at different times of day or events. Sounds painful with ST at least for now…
Just installed Motion Lighting. It seems to be closer to what I describe but still sets a single % for all of the “child” dimmer switches. Or did I miss something?
Also, a small bug - picking a Mode is required. It does not allow selection of “All Modes”
It’s a very old thread so i think u solved it for a long time ago, but my first thought was to make a scene with the lights in different dimm level, then when u lock the door it will tigger to set that scene on.