Hi all - I’m building a dedicated media room that will only have smart lights - mainly Lifx lights and some Hue strip lights. I do not want a traditional on/off light switch at the door, because of course people will flip the switch killing power to the bulbs when leaving.
Instead I’d like to have a set of buttons like this device provides: http://amzn.com/B00RY4LRTS . I want to program the bottom large button to turn off all lights. And I want to program the other buttons so that they will recall certain Lifx scenes. So if you push the first button, it will tell Lifx to run Scene 1. Button two would run Scene 2, and so forth. Think about Hue Tap for a moment, if you’re familiar with it. I’m trying to get this same functionality, but for Lifx (which apparently does not have such a switch).
Is the switch I linked to above capable of doing this? If so, how would I program each scene button to link it to a Lifx scene? Is this something I would do all inside of ST, or I have to use Rule Machine, or perhaps IFTTT?
To take it a step further - in addition to having Lifx A19 and BR30 bulbs, I will also have Hue Light Strip Plus in the room. I’d want to combine these into the scenes. So for example, if you push the button for Scene 1 it would tell Lifx to run Scene 1 (controlling A19/BR30 bulbs) and also tell Hue to run its Scene 1 (controlling light strips). Is this done the same as above or do I need IFTTT or something else?
Also would this device work too? http://amzn.com/B0050T2O1O . If I understand this comes with a RF remove which may be handy at the seat to quickly recall a scene without fishing for my iPhone…
Any device which can work as what SmartThings calls a “button controller” can do this in some fashion, although I don’t know if it can directly trigger an LIFX scene or if you have to individually define the settings. That depends on the LIFX integration, and I’m not familiar with those details.
Button controllers work by sending a message to the hub, which then sends a message to the device. ( or in the case of cloud to cloud integrations, the hub would send a message via the cloud)
For this reason the button device doesn’t have to be the same protocol as the end device. You can also create groups of devices with different protocols, for example, having a single button press turn on a group consisting of some LIFX bulbs, AZ wave pocket socket, and some Hue lightstrips if you liked. There are several different button controller devices that can be used.
That includes the SC7, which is quite popular in the community even though it’s not on the official compatibility list.
Also most devices in the remote and buttons FAQ:
Some of the Leviton models can work and some can’t. You can search the forums for the specific models that you’re interested in.
The one that you linked to, the Leviton VRCS4, can work as a button controller.
But the very similar looking Leviton VRCz4 cannot.
If you do want to use the scene feature provided by the manufacturer for Hue or LIFX, rather than setting up the individual bulb settings in a SmartThings smart app, then you might indeed need to use IFTTT. That can introduce some additional lag, though. So most people prefer to do it through a smartapp although the UI may not be as elegant.
Anyway, the point is just that yes, the two devices you linked to can be used as “button controllers” to initiate commands via SmartThings to LIFX bulbs. And you can definitely group commands to LIFX bulbs with commands to other SmartThings-controlled devices like the light strips.
But I don’t know if they can trigger specific LIFX scenes or if you would have to set the bulb values individually inside of SmartThings or use the buttons to trigger IFTTT and control the scenes that way.
Hopefully someone who is familiar with LIFX and smartthings will be able to answer that part of the question.
You can’t unfortunately turn on LIFX scenes from Smartthings. You can however create virtual switches that you can turn on and off with Smartthings. With IFT TT, you can set up recipes that say when Those virtual switches are turned on, activate LIFX scene.
Then link your enerwave device to those virtual switches.
So… it has been already 3 years since the last answer to this thread and I have not been able to find an option to do this. Are we still unable to trigger light scenes for Lifx bulbs?
I was aware about the IFTTT channel option. Honestly, I do not have good experiences with it and an important part of buying the SmartThings hub was to avoid the use of IFTTT and having a functional home if internet is down .
It is sad that it has been so long and we still do not have direct LIFX integration for scenes.
I understand the frustration with not having a full integration.
Separately, though, SmartThings is a cloud-based platform. There only a very few things that can run locally at the present time, basically the official smart lighting feature, and that only for some devices, and a little bit of smart home monitor. Neither Philip use nor the Logitech Harmony will run with SmartThings if the Internet is down, even though those are both official local integrations. Even routines don’t run locally.
SmartThings is very flexible and versatile, but if you’re looking for a system that runs when the Internet is down, SmartThings probably isn’t it.
Hey guys - I posted this in the CoRE thread but thought it may be a good fit to ask here. Can I set up a Piston so that when a particular Scene button is pressed on this Enerwave device it triggers a specific LIFX Scene that I’ve created in the LIFX app. Is this possible, and if so, how? If not possible to directly call a LIFX scene, what’s a workaround to essentially accomplish the same thing (make certain bulbs turn on with specific brightness levels and specific colors)? Thanks!
Thanks. This was tremendously helpful and I have the buttons working with the Smart App as a starting point/test. However what I really want to do is use CoRE and Pistons to toggle the virtual buttons, because CoRE will give me a lot more flexibility than the Smart App. I ran into problems, however, getting CoRE to work with its buttons. In particular it only recognizes 4 buttons (with the smart app it recognizes all 7) and even then none of the buttons seem to be recognized by CoRE (Pistons never execute when they should) even tho with the Smart App they work fine (and just to make sure I have deleted the buttons from the Smart App so they are not being looked at by the Smart App and CoRE at the same time, in case that would cause a problem).
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