Using a smart dimmer switch control plugin dimmer

[ki4r]

Hey so I have a smart dimmer switch from levitation currently in my living room. In the same room I have a Plugin dimmer which will connect to the hub and allow me to dim my lamp. The problem is I can’t seam to find anyway to get the already smart switch to communicate with the plugin dimmer. I would like to make it easy for others who come over to use the switch to dim the lamp along with the lights. I have messed around with Smartapps a little and have figured out i need to basically have the plugin dimmer watch the state of the switch. I just cant seam to get it to work with the dimming function. I actually manged to get it to work just on and off but that is only half the battle. Any help or links to documentation I haven’t been able to find would be much appreciated.

[JDRoberts]

If I understand your question, There are several custom smart apps that can have one smart dimmer device follow another. I think trendsetter is the most popular right now, but there are couple of others as well. You will find them in the community – created wiki in the quick browse lists on the Lighting list.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

If you haven’t used custom code before, it’s pretty straightforward – – you’re basically going to copy the author’s code and paste it into your own account. Here’s the FAQ on that process:

FAQ: An Overview of Using Custom Code in SmartThings

So you're new to SmartThings, you asked a question, and someone suggested "custom code" as an answer. Or you were browsing the forums, and you found something that sounded like it would be perfect for what you wanted, but again, "uses custom code." What does that mean, how hard is it to do, and what's the difference between a "SmartApp" and a "Device Type Handler"? (Note: the official terminology has changed a couple of times. "device type handler," "device handler," "DTH," and "device type" all mean the same thing, and you will find all these terms used in the forums.) SECTION I: SMARTAPPS AND DEVICE HANDLERS: WHAT THEY ARE SmartAPPS: Tiny Programs to decide what a specific device should do when, or to collect the information from a specific device SmartApps, including the var…

The other alternative is to use webcore. This is a very powerful community – created rules engine and can definitely let you do this. I just think it might be overkill for this particular use case.

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. :dog::blush: [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…