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.