Smart Lights - Feature Requests

Having multiple conversations with people who are just starting to get interested in smart things because of the echo integration, I’m finding everybody wants three things that I don’t know how to do. It may be that this is already in smart lights and I just haven’t found it. If so, let me know how to do this.

Group control of lights for dimming, color temperature, and color to support scenes where individual lights in the group can be set at different levels if desired.

So say you have a group of three lights in the living room, a, B, and C. you want the ability to dim a and have b and c follow that to the same dim setting. This is not at the time of initial turning on, it’s after the light is already on.

You also want the ability to create a scene where a and B are dimmed to 50% and c is dimmed to 75%, and this scene is triggered by a switch or a motion sensor which is a fourth device.

I know there are ways to do this in smartthings with either a custom app or something else, I’m just asking if there is any way to do it through smart lights?

Adding additional automations for the same light

Once you finish setting up one lighting rule, it’s not clear how you then set up a different rule for the same device. Say you have an entry light. You wanted to come on at night when the door opens. You also wanted to come on when a motion sensor on the far side of that room is triggered. And you want to come on from a button on the minimote. I know how to use smart lights to set up any one of those, but how do I then set up the next two after the first one has been created and saved?

viewing all the automations for one light together

Finally, and everybody is asking me for this, is there a way to easily see the different lighting automations that have been set up for a single device? I don’t mean just going to the room, then going to the light, then going to its smartapps and seeing the names of each automation. I mean actually seeing a rules engine type view of what’s been scheduled for that light. Again, I know how to do this for one lighting automation, I don’t know if there’s a way to do it once there’s more than one.

If there is no way to do these three things: set up group control, easily add additional automations for a device after the first one has been saved, and view all the automations for one device together, then those would all be feature request.

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You know it is bad when @JDRoberts says this! :wink:

These are all great notes. I hope that ST puts some resources to rapidly expand this SmartApp (hint, hint… @Ben). It is absolutely the first place that ALL first-timers go to start their HA. It ALWAYS starts with lights, since they are the lowest bar of entry.

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Actually I started with a couple of Schlage 469 locks, then it took me 6 months after I installed them to actually get a Hub ( Wink) so I could have lights come on when somebody unlocked the door.

I will agree that most people’s leap into HA is having more than just an old mechanical timer to turn their lights off and on. I will also bet 1/2 the farm that a vast majority never go much further than that.
The light controls may get more complicated over time, but it is still just controlling their lights. Until I got my V2 last week I had over 50 if than rules in my A+ just to control the 30 lights in my house.

To be honest my coffee pot has a clock on it. If I want coffee waiting for me at 6AM , I don’t need a ST rule to turn on my coffee pot when I get in the shower. I can simply set the coffee pot to come on at 5:45 and when I come down at 6 the coffee is waiting for me. Now if you can make an app that will take the beans out of the canister, put them into the grinder, put the ground beans into the basket, fill the coffee maker with water and then turn it on for me. Then I will be impressed. Since if coffee is not ready for me it is usually because I neglected to make it the night before.

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It’s funny that both groups and scenes are supported natively by Z-Wave protocol. Any dumb Z-Wave remote control can do it. Yet SmartThings seems to unable to provide basic scene controller functionality even after major hardware and software upgrade. Yes, SmartThings “works” with Zigbee and other stuff (few of which actually work well), but as far as z-wave is concerned, they basically took a perfectly good home automation protocol and stripped it of all the cool features, relegating it to merely a remote on/off switch.

@JDRoberts, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you answered this question over on this other thread? Not that I disagree with you, because the answer is basically “Yes, you can, but it’s not always obvious.” I just wanted to avoid retreading the same ground.

It threw me for a little bit when I started with the new app, but as an experienced ST user, it’s certainly easier to reason it out than someone unfamiliar with the platform. Even after realizing how it worked, I’ve caught myself browsing the Smart Apps Marketplace list, thinking of a lighting rule I wanted to make, and tapping Smart Lights there before remembering I had to go back to the other tab and access my installed Smart Apps.

I think part of the problem is that Smart Lights doesn’t quite behave like a regular Smart App. It’s almost like it’s a super Smart App that spawns mini Smart Apps, given the way they are listed under a device’s details. I like the way they are listed under each device, because it does let you see which rules apply to a given device, but it does differ from ordinary Smart App behavior and as such can be confusing. I’m not sure what the solution would be. It’s almost like this type of automation interface should have its own section separate from Smart Apps.

Yes, I found the answer to that one. It’s not pretty.

However, apparently the UI wants them to set it up under marketplace, view it under device details, but add a second rule for the same device under the smartapps tab of the rooms view.

That is exactly how it works, each automation is a completely separate smartapp instance, managed by the parent.

I would think that your GE links may work locally using the Smart lighting trigerred by ST multi’s in v2 if your use ST device type rather than attaching it via the hue hub. Just guessing. No first hand experience. Hue integration I am sure will go thru the cloud…

Continuing the discussion from Smart Lights - Feature Requests:

I was thinking the same thing! I had to double back to make sure it was the same @JDRoberts. :open_mouth: It’s bad @brianlees. It’s bad.

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When using the Smart Lighting app it would be useful if you could either set the light to dim down or turn off (rather than just turn off completely) following the action set - ie the light comes on at 60% when motion is detected, but then dims to 10% (at present it can only turn off) after 5 minutes.

This would be most useful as a kids night light action.

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Peter,

See if something like this would work…I made it for that very purpose…

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Here’s what I’d call a ‘sexy’ feature I’d like:

Any lighting device that supports dimming, be it a switch or smart bulb, when switched on they should ‘fade’ on from nothing to the set dim level and when switched off they should fade off.

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I don’t think I have any dimmers or bulbs that don’t do this.

GE and Leviton dimmers, GE Link bulbs all do it.

Bare in mind I’m still using the Wink Hub but say if its dimming level is set to 75%, if I then switch it on it’ll go straight to 75% and not gradually fade up from 0 to 75% and if I switch it off it just goes straight to 0% and not gradually fade off from 75%

Is this not what ST does with GE Link bulbs?

For most devices, fade rate is a parameter that you can set. Some people like it to fade in slower, some people like it to fade in faster, the point is you should be able to set it to be what you want it to be for each individual device that supports variable fade rate.

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So, just to clarify, on the ST hub with a GE Link bulb attached, if you turn it on, it’ll ramp up the brightness and not just go directly to the set level? And it’ll fade off too?

I use the community device type and it does this. see post 217 for caveats

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@JDRoberts, I agree. Here is the use case. When my wife arrives she usually walls i through the back yard so I have the presence sensor set to turn on the back yard lights. Sometimes she comes in through the garage which means that she does not even see that the back lights are on and they could stay on all night.

Chris

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I would like to emphasise on the lack of exemption rules. For instance, I set up my exterior lights to be turned on when I open my window, with a delay to turn them off (3 minutes).
The problem arise when the light is already turned on (I have guests), and someone open and close the window, as the lights get turned off after the delay.
I have a smartapp that avoids this behaviour, but I would really like to use the ONLY local processing!.

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There are several examples of this in the ecosystem where an action takes place that, “logically” speaking based on the settings, should not happen. I would definitely like to see some sort of preference available in all SmartApps that allows the user to set whether the SmartApp will or will not override a previous setting, perhaps even under a different mode.