So. I do NOT understand the logic and the sequence of events when programming room lighting.
I understand "push", "double-tap" and "hold-release" just fine, but when combined with "toggle on/off" and dimmer control everything falls apart. There has to be something I am missing, because it sure feels something IS missing. So my first question is if there is an idiot's guide to this, somewhere. Because that feels exactly like something I would need...
To make things (fairly) simple lets assume that on the control side I use control buttons with "push", "double-tap" and "hold-release", none of which actually controls any wiring. On the receiver end I use "simple on/off switches" and "dimmer controls" (both dimmable bulbs and zigbee-controlled led transformators). All (zigbee) bulbs are connected to a Hue Bridge, that is connected to Hubitat using the standard built-in Hue Bridge Integration app. The built-in "Button controllers"-app (5.1) is used for button rules.
What I want to achieve is:
- a "push"-command acts as a normal on/off toggle
- a "hold" starts a down-ward dimming procedure that stops on "release"
- a "double tap" can be used for anything (like turning on lights at 50%, or turning off all lights, it doesn't matter)
The problems I experience:
A. when using the "toggle on/off" function on multiple lights, occasionally some bulbs/lights will not turn on/shut off, putting the lighting group in "de-sync" => generating a "push"-command will turn some of them on and some off, with the next toggle command switching that around.
I suspect this is due to some sort of de-sync between a bulb and the Hue Bridge and/or the Hue Bridge and Hubitat. But is really irritating (you have to "reset" the lighting group the hard way in order for the lights to sync again). It also feels ridiculous.
B. When dimming lights using "hold-release", the lights will stay dimmed even when turned off and back on. And there is of course no way to dim them back up again, so after dimming they stay permanently dimmed (until you manually log in to Hubitat and put them back at 100%, which sort of misses the mark from a "lighting control" viewpoint). This is so incredible dumb that I am sure I am missing something, but I don't have clue what that is.
I assumed there would be an "always turn on at X level"-setting somewhere (that is what my first smart home Chinese system had) , but I can't seem to find such a setting anywhere.
I even tried using "if...then"-based logic instead of the simple (and very useable) toggle function, but it feels downright silly to go through "if on then turn off" and "if off then turn on" and "set to level 100" for a lot of lighting. So silly you could probably call it "un-smart home automation"...
In addition to all this some of the "switch"- and "dimmer"-commands seems to have their own internal logic. Like it being impossible to dim down to zero (= "off") using the "start lowering"-command and setting dimmer level will also turn a light on (so you can't reset the level to 100 after turning a dimmed light off, because that will turn it on again). And if you have a dimmable bulb behind a normal on/off switch, the bulb is of course not even controllable when the switch is set to "off" (as the bulb then gets no electricity).
Even if I am "dumb" I figured that I am not the only one, and that this probably is a very common problem (that thousands upon thousands have already solved). But I can't seem to find any such relevant information, not on the Hubitat forum or on the 'net. So if someone could point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.
Lighting is probably the first thing anyone starts controlling and push control buttons have been around like forever, so I really do feel a bit dumb not being able to figure this out. Or rather: figuring out how to elegantly use built-in functions for such basic lighting control, without having to resort to "coding"...