Scenes Beta!

[MEarly]

@JDRoberts

A routine treats all lights as a single group, so they all get set to the same dim setting, color, and color temperature.

A scene lets you give each light its own individual setting.

There are other ways to do that, of course, particularly webcore, but this is just matching some of the basic functionality in other home automation systems.

Thanks for pointing out that distinction JD. Scenes being able to drill into individual device configs is an advantage. I haven’t used routines in so long (other than for modes and various changes that happen on mode change) that I forgot about the all or none restrictions. So, I can see this being beneficial to non-CoRE/webCoRE folks.

But, all of this just makes me wonder why we have this arbitrary differentiation between scenes and routines anyway. Routines are potentially automated Scenes with limited configuration. Scenes are non-automated Routines with limited device scope. Ughhh.

[eric182 (Eman ym)]

If anybody has the lifx app, you know how scenes work…with lifx bulbs…its kinda like that.

[rontalley]

They could have just added the drill down options into Routines…

[MEarly]

I guess they could give us the ability to have Scenes and Routines locally-run (with the addition of more light DTHs), then I wouldn’t complain at all.

[Automated_House (Jimmy)]

Scenes don’t use the normal smart app architecture, either, so i’m sure there are some technical reasons why the two can’t be combined.

[JDRoberts]

“Scenes” is the term that’s been around in home automation for at least 30 years, and pretty much always means the same thing: the snapshot end result with different settings for different devices. It’s not an “if then” statement. Just the end result.

Z wave uses it this way, Lutron uses it this way, HomeKit uses it this way, control 4 uses it this way. That’s 4 different network protocols, but all with the same basic concept of a scene.

Scenes can be activated just with an icon or a button controller or can be automated by including them in some automation rule. But the scene itself doesn’t have the rule built into it, it’s just the end result.

I’m sure SmartThings could do it a different way if they wanted to, but I think it’s actually a good thing if they follow common industry practice in this.

One of the first questions we often get from people who are coming in from a different home automation system is “Does smartthings have scenes?” And now it does.

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@Synthesis

You have your devices organized by room. You set your lights in each location that you want to capture to the desired settings.

You then “Create new scene”. The options come up for both manual creation and capture. You choose capture, check the boxes for the rooms you want to be part of the scene, and hit Done. All devices in those rooms get captured at their current state, and you now have your scene.

Great idea! … a couple notes:

1. The SmartApp “Scene Machine” does exactly this; but doesn’t have an “editor” to modify/tweak the scene using your phone.

2. During the Beta, SmartThings mentioned that “capture” was a Feature under consideration.

[Synthesis (The Viking AKA "Holy Crap You're a Giant!")]

If only Scene Machine were compatible with ST’s scenes, then you could implement your scene and embed it within the ST Scenes.

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@anon36505037

ST couldn’t easily replace routines outright (forcing everyone to rebuild!)

I’ve already made a Feature Request that “Routines” and “Scenes” should be 100% interchangeable inside SmartApps.

This would give ALL EXISTING SmartApps immediate “Scene Activation” functionality.

Yes indeed… It would have been really, really, really clever if SmartThings had implemented Scenes as an extension of Routines instead of a whole new object. Regardless, my suggestion could be implemented today if they just “merged” the Scene and Routine lists in SmartApp calls.

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@Automated_House

Scenes don’t use the normal smart app architecture, …

SmartThings needs to get a head-start into using their new “SmartThings Cloud” APIs for internal use before 3rd party developers dig in too much.

So … yup.

But Routines are not “normal SmartApps” either. They could have been combined; but I’m backseat driving here.

[coffee4thought]

I like the idea of scenes. I have recently used the Dim and Dimmer SmartApp written by a community member and I’ve also tried out the Scenes from ST app (public, not beta).

One thing I wish could be improved upon is that Scenes interferes with sensor-controlled lights. For example, in the living room I have a motion sensor that turns on lights. With Scenes from ST, a scene will execute but then the motion sensor will execute again, overwriting the scene.

With Dim and Dimmer, I actually created a separate mode called “Manual Lighting Control”. When I execute Dim and Dimmer, it puts the hub under that mode and prevents my motion sensor from changing the lights.

Hope you guys can consider this scenario.

[Synthesis (The Viking AKA "Holy Crap You're a Giant!")]

Use the routine to both set the mode and trigger the scene…

[coffee4thought]

That’s true. I have to say I didn’t notice that the new app allows routines to trigger the scene. So I guess feature wise the two are equal.

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@coffee4thought

So I guess feature wise the two are equal.

They are “partners” now. Scenes are a good and more powerful way to organize the “lighting” settings of Routines. They can be edited and activated distinctly from the Routine and SmartThings can improve Scenes without breaking the Routines that call them.

Perhaps Scenes should have been a feature before Routines… but SmartThings Routines … called “Hello Home Phrases”, were born a long time ago.

Frankly, Scenes are just “special Routines”, but they would be less exciting if they were called that. … but slightly more useful though.

[WB70]

@Synthesis

You set your lights in each location that you want to capture to the desired settings.

You then “Create new scene”.

That’s exactly how it’s done in the Hue Application. If you want to create a New Scene for a single light or lights in a group, you set the desired color of the device(s) and brightness and then click on Create New Scene using “current light settings”.

[JB_Bentz (J Bentz)]

FYI. Scenes got pulled into GH this morning, so it looks like they can be triggered directly from GH, versus requiring a routine as well.

[SteveWhite]

@tgauchat

They are “partners” now. Scenes are a good and more powerful way to organize the “lighting” settings of Routines. They can be edited and activated distinctly from the Routine and SmartThings can improve Scenes without breaking the Routines that call them.

Scenes could be superior in one way, execution time limits. SmartThings has said it uses a different execution model than Routines and other SmartApps. I wonder if the 20 second limit for Routines has been eclipsed by this new model.

Christmas was ugly last year. I had to create some spaghetti code to get all 36+ Christmas-related devices to switch reliably when commanded. Looking forward to seeing if Scenes fixes this issue.

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@SteveWhite

SmartThings has said it uses a different execution model than Routines and other SmartApps. I wonder if the 20 second limit for Routines has been eclipsed by this new model.

Fun to speculate…

1. You’ll notice that the lights in Scenes are not executed in parallel. They were “really slow” at one point in the Beta but improved quite a bit. Still… that implies it could add up to 20 seconds.

2. Indeed, if the new API is being used, then the execution-processing engine for the Scene is not a SmartApp, and is thus free from the hard-coded 20 seconds limit. We don’t know if SmartThings has imposed safety limits on their own processing engine.

3. The new API itself can still somehow get entangled with limits under particular circumstances (which I don’t think would occur for Scenes, since they are just an independent series of steps). I presume it will mostly be rate-limited (i.e., number of API calls per second, or per minute).

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@anon36505037

It uses their new rules engine…

SmartThings has a “rules engine”?

[brbeaird (Brian)]

@vlad

If a scene is selected in Smart Lighting it will force the app to run in the cloud but the goal eventually is to get it running locally.

This is what I’m excited for. I like scenes but keep my rules as local as possible, so my usage of them will be limited until they run locally. Will we get a heads up whenever things are running locally?