Totally newbie*) question here - sorry about that.
Just bough the SmartThings hub. Using “non-old” app. I have 25 or so Z-Wave lights. Individual control (on/off/dim) of them works fine from the app. Making them turn on/off from my Z-Wave buttons as well. Scenes too. But they all go on/off in serie. How can I make them trigger at the same time?
On a grander level, I assume this is because I can not add any Smart Apps (??? it’s called “Smarta Appar” on my swedish phone). How do I go about this? I am somewhat aware of the current, ongoing, platform switch, and some kind of cloud solution that may or may not go away in the immediate future, but honestly, it confuses me more than anything else. I don’t have any complicated automation needs, but the current app is extremely basic.
Thanks in advance for your patience - Peter
*) I never intended to go SmartThings so I never had time to do any research; I planned for Hubitat, but had to give that up for severe incompatibility with Qubino DIN dimmers. Also no Z-Wave experience at all until a month ago - previous X10 and Insteon user.
You should be able to control them together with Automations, but the Smart Lighting SmartApp should show up in your app as well.
Otherwise, if I understand you correctly, your real problem is the so called “popcorn effect”.
If you control your light together in any way, they turn on/off like a popcorn pops, one here one there, until all on, or off.
With Zwave the only way would be if you could define an association to groups and turn on or off with that, but I am not sure is that possible as the moment with the new app.
As it is now, I can control them together with Scenes, Groups, or simply as adding all actions to the same button on the controller (which results in an automation). But regardless of how, I still get the popcorn effect.
When I google the issue, I get references to “linking” lights, some lights “following” others, by some coding methods that I don’t understand how to get at. They seem to refer to some kind of cloud extension to a previous version of the app, but then there is the information that those services has disappeared, or are in the process of disappearing. Or not. Very confusing, this.
My list of Smart Apps is empty (just a picture of someone lying on a cloud), and the list of possible apps to add is empty, except for “SmartThings Home Monitor”, which seems to be Samsung’s security app.
With the new V3 app, SmartLighting is now region-locked and not available in all regions. (I know, that seems weird to me too, since I consider it an essential feature, but apparently Samsung does not. )
We have previously had a community member from Denmark confirm that smartlighting was not available in their region.
What is the brand/model of the switches showing the popcorn effect? That’s quite unusual for Z wave devices unless you are using a scene with a large number of devices, in which case it can happen. Try setting up a scene with five devices and see if you still have the popcorn effect.
I would rather not comment on that. Someone may would mark my comment as inappropriate.
But see my comment here from earlier regarding the same subject:
Maybe someone should advise Samsung that legal rules are different in the US from state to state, then they may would start it there as well just to make bigger mess and higher user dissatisfaction.
Sorry for the late reply, and thanks for your engagemant. The popcorn effect is definitely noticable for a smaller scene as well.
I just created a five-lamp scene with all five lamps set to 50% and it takes about three seconds - and extra annoying is that they (or some of them?) first turn on 100% (or to be precise, I assume, to their previous dim setting), and then dims down. The sequence seems rather random.
Turning on all 25 lamps explicitly to 100% takes about 10 seconds.
Turning them all off takes about the same time.
The dimmers are all Qubino Mini (a handful) & DIN dimmers (15).
There’s also some outlet switches from Popp, Aeotec and Happ, and a RGBW dimmer from Fibaro.
Controllers (remotes) from Aeotec (a bunch of Wallmote Quad+1 Nanomote) are on the same ZWave mesh, but not involved here.
Turning one light on/off without automation is more or less immediate from the app, at least for the switches. The dimmers are soft Dim, so it’s harder to see exactly how long it takes.
Small apartment with Smallthings hub exactly in the middle, only plaster walls, no big leaps between mesh units.
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