Device Grouping

[simplextech]

Currently the Philips Hue Driver does not support Scenes/Groups and the ISY Driver also is not supporting Scenes. 

Is there a hopefully somewhat simple way to group some devices together, such as light bulbs into a group that can be used in an event to issue ONE cmd to turn them all on or off or adjust brightness?  Does this have to be done through a CML macro somehow?

Is there any examples somewhere for creating a ... dunno... "virtual group" of devices type container?

[Dean Roddey]

Doing it outside of the device typically doesn't work well, since it has to turn them on one at a time, so they aren't the same as groups or whatever, where typically the controller sends a multi-cast type message to all of the affected lights at once. I just haven't had time to look at those things yet on the Hue or ISY. I'm not completely sure that the ISY ever supported scenes, that may be a cut-n-paste error from another driver when I created the docs. I'll have to look at the driver code.

[simplextech]

Doing it outside of the device typically doesn't work well, since it has to turn them on one at a time, so they aren't the same as groups or whatever, where typically the controller sends a multi-cast type message to all of the affected lights at once. I just haven't had time to look at those things yet on the Hue or ISY. I'm not completely sure that the ISY ever supported scenes, that may be a cut-n-paste error from another driver when I created the docs. I'll have to look at the driver code.

I can use LogicServer for a grouping for a bool to see "status" of a group of lights which is great but there's no way to control them.  It's super efficient and no popcorn when using a Hue Group to turn on/off groups of lights.

The ISYv2 Driver has at least the beginning of Scene support

Code:

Case NodeTypes.Scene :

                    TmpStr := "SCNE#";
                    TmpStr.Append(m_NodeList[Index].GetName());
                    TmpFld.SetWithLimits
                    (
                        TmpStr
                        , CQCFldTypes.String
                        , CQCFldAccess.ReadWrite
                        , "Enum: Off, On, Fast Off, Fast On"
                    );
                    TmpFld.SetAlwaysWrite(True);
                    Fields.AddObject(TmpFld);

                EndCase;

However nothing gets loaded for any of my Scenes.

[simplextech]

Doing it outside of the device typically doesn't work well, since it has to turn them on one at a time, so they aren't the same as groups or whatever, where typically the controller sends a multi-cast type message to all of the affected lights at once. I just haven't had time to look at those things yet on the Hue or ISY. I'm not completely sure that the ISY ever supported scenes, that may be a cut-n-paste error from another driver when I created the docs. I'll have to look at the driver code.

In the driver it doesn't look like there's a match for finding scenes based on the family type.  Here's a sample scene aka "group" entry in my ISY

Code:

<group flag="132" nodeDefId="InsteonDimmer">
        <address>5399</address>
        <name>Garage Door 1</name>
        <family>6</family>
        <parent type="3">14774</parent>
        <deviceGroup>42</deviceGroup>
        <pnode>5399</pnode>
        <ELK_ID>A02</ELK_ID>
        <members>
            <link type="16">22 8F 6D 4</link>
            <link type="16">48 8B 99 1</link>
            <link type="0">48 8B 99 2</link>
        </members>
    </group>

Let me know if more information is needed.

[Dean Roddey]

Yeh, it may have been initially intended but just never followed through on. Are those just boolean things, or do you write a dimming level to them? It doesn't show the usual stuff about value type and whatnot.

[simplextech]

Yeh, it may have been initially intended but just never followed through on. Are those just boolean things, or do you write a dimming level to them? It doesn't show the usual stuff about value type and whatnot.

ISY Scenes now are boolean (on/off).  In the past some of them had dim/brighten but no longer as that was a "hack" and UDI decided to not implement a hack any longer.

[kblagron]

Yeh, it may have been initially intended but just never followed through on. Are those just boolean things, or do you write a dimming level to them? It doesn't show the usual stuff about value type and whatnot.

ISY Scenes now are boolean (on/off).  In the past some of them had dim/brighten but no longer as that was a "hack" and UDI decided to not implement a hack any longer.

The V1 version of ISY that Wuench wrote does support scenes.  I had assumed that you had taken his V1 driver and made it V2, but maybe not.

He provided the following fields in that driver: SceneBrighten, SceneDim, SceneFadeStart, SceneFadeStop, SceneFastOff, SceneFastOn, SceneOff, SceneOn

I use this feature a good bit in the driver.   I am using V 2.3 of the driver he wrote.

[simplextech]

Yeh, it may have been initially intended but just never followed through on. Are those just boolean things, or do you write a dimming level to them? It doesn't show the usual stuff about value type and whatnot.

ISY Scenes now are boolean (on/off).  In the past some of them had dim/brighten but no longer as that was a "hack" and UDI decided to not implement a hack any longer.

The V1 version of ISY that Wuench wrote does support scenes.  I had assumed that you had taken his V1 driver and made it V2, but maybe not.

He provided the following fields in that driver: SceneBrighten, SceneDim, SceneFadeStart, SceneFadeStop, SceneFastOff, SceneFastOn, SceneOff, SceneOn

I use this feature a good bit in the driver.   I am using V 2.3 of the driver he wrote.

I stand corrected.  Local from ISY the scenes DO support all of the functions mentioned.  It was from the Alexa interface (for whatever reason) the UDI removed functions and only provided On/Off.

Is Wuench around still?

[kblagron]

He is active over on home-assistant.io.  I am guessing he must of switched to using that.  His website is here: http://www.wuench.com/CQC.htm

[simplextech]

He is active over on home-assistant.io.  I am guessing he must of switched to using that.  His website is here: http://www.wuench.com/CQC.htm

That's interesting.  I'll send him a message over there.  I'm curious as to why the switch.  I've used HASS for a long time and it's fun but it's not stable.  Most recently several months actually in time the ISY component is broken because it doesn't like some device or scene in my ISY so the whole component is broken and won't run... kinda kills everything with HASS if you don't have devices.