[RELEASE] Dim and Dimmer for Routines & Remote Controller (Dim scenes on routine selection or on remote button presses)

SmartApps & Automations Community Created SmartApps
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Hi all,

Due to some of the ongoing smartthings issues and problems I’ve experienced with some apps losing their states, I’ve decided to develop an alternative suite of apps to solve some of the scenarios that do not rely on application state and perform more simplified sets of tasks.

The first app that has come out of this is a new modified version of “Dim and Dimmer” by @geko. The big difference is that it uses routines instead of modes, and also now supports color bulbs. It will let you select a list of routines, as well as a list of color bulbs, dimmers, and switches, and you will then be able to select actions for each of said device for each routine. There’s no limit to how many devices or variations you can have in a scene, so you can really get crazy with the dimming and have all sorts of lights dimmed to all sorts of levels!

I call it “Dim and Dimmer Routine” and it’s available here:

This is likely the first of a few apps I plan on creating for these types of purposes.

The next app is a modified version of remote controller, also by @geko

This changes around a lot of the internal logic and completely eliminates the need for states within the application. This in turned allowed me to make some of the generation of values a bit more dynamic in order to support the big thing here: adjusting switches/dimmers/color bulbs! Yes! A way to set your switches/dimmers/bulbs from remote control that doesn’t rely on states! And thus isn’t effected by the recent ST breakages. And now, it includes toggle support! Yes! I’ve now completely eliminated all the other rule apps I was using with this one! I hope it’s helpful to others as well.

Some basic instructions for remote controller:
First, select a remote, then select any dimmers/switches/color bulbs/temperature bulbs that you want to control with it. Aftewards, click on “add button” and define your remote buttons - for the typical aeon minimote that’ll be 4 buttons. Each button has pressed/held states that you can define. Likewise, for all the lighting options, you can select a level, and a toggle on/off option. If toggle is set to “on” then any time the button is pressed it will check if the device is already on, and if it is, rather than performing the normal action, it will toggle it off. The next press to turn it back on will perform the programmed action as expected.

Color bulbs have a hue/saturation option, and temperature bulbs have a color temperature value. These are raw values for each - hue/saturation are values from 1-100 typically, and temperature values are normally 2700 - 5000. I could possibly make sliders for these options, but it’s been really quick to program them this way. I may try to create a map or something of what colors equal what values - but I’ve never been happy with the selections that apps bundle - not all bulbs seem to respond the same to the same values - and most apps have been programmed for phillips hues, but i’m using osram lightify’s so the values for those don’t match up. That said, i’m not going to put color defaults, but i may try to provide some lists of common colors for various bulb types…all else said its not hard to trial and error. I did also notice that there may be a way to specify the hex color code rather than hue/saturation values - there’s tons of tools that can help you pick colors for those on the web, so I might considering adding an option for this too…

Main benefits of this app over other apps for programming remote buttons is that it lays out all the possible devices for each button and allows you to easily create scenes with different dimming/color/temp/switch values for each individual device. It also does not rely on application state, so there isn’t any stateful data to lose, the app relies strictly on the settings dialogues for all it’s data, and so far in my testing it’s been performing very quickly as well.

You can create a separate instance of the app for each remote you have - you can also add multiple remotes under one, but this is only useful if you wanted multiple remotes to all have the same exact programming.

8 Likes
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Thank you very much for this. I have trialled it last night, and think this works great - and it’s nice and fast.
Like you, I will be doing a lot of trial and error on getting the correct values for hue/sat (I am using Philips Hue - bulbs, strips, lamps)
Entering a hex code into the settings would be a great addition!

Thanks for your effort on this.

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Thanks for the feedback, i’m glad it’s working out well.

I’d suggest leaving saturation at 100% (or just leave it blank) and try various hues…I know 100 is usually red, low values like 6 are orangey, i think blue is 66 and green is 34, at least for me…then once you find the hue you like, you can lower the saturation if you want the color to be less intense/more white…i am curious how accurate the hex values will be - something tells me they still might end up being slightly off and have to be tweaked by trial and error. i’ll look into adding that soon. I find myself using that orangey shade “6” a lot, it’s like candlelight or something.

I might be able to rip a list of common values out from the code of one of the many apps that has presets like this - it might give a general guide…it seems the values aren’t really that accurate and most of these bulbs just put out “something around there” but if you want exact colors then trial and error is often the only way to go. I wonder how tight the manufacturing tolerances even are on these things?

Let me know if you have any other suggestions/feedback/other things you want to control, etc…I’m open for more ideas, I’ve covered my basic needs now though.

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Are there any plans to update this so it will recognize the Hue Ambient White bulbs? I had high hopes for this app, but it only sees my Hue color bulbs… not the ambient whites that I can change the temperature on.

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i dont think it’d be very hard to do but i dont actually have any of those bulbs to test it with.

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You should get one. They are nice bulbs. :slight_smile:

They work exactly like the color bulbs, except no “color” capability… only color temp (from 2000k to 6500k)

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This is by-far the best Scene App i have came across. The only way it could be better in my opinion is if i could use a simulated switch to control the scenes, and one better if you could tie it to a fiscal switch like a group. but for now i will be keeping my eyes open because like i said this is the best one i have found so far.

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I’m sure you could modify it and make a version that used switches to trigger the scenes instead of routines/remote buttons…would be nice to combine these apps into one and make the “input” configurable, but at that point you’re just making another version of rule machine…truth be told - this was sort of all a proof of concept to prove that I could make a stateless app, and achieve what I needed to do, when at the time - rule machine was broken (now turned into CoRE/Piston or whatever it’s called)

I’d possibly just use core/piston now that smartthings isn’t broken anymore, haha, but I am still using this for my own needs, just not sure I have the time to start adding tons of features, it would certainly be nice, but the issue is mainly that it was kind of a hack around a platform issue that’s since been resolved.