Some of my switches have multiple LEDs, or highly programmable LED bars along the sides. I've also put a couple of RGB lightbulbs in places where they could be used for indicating status, state, alerts, notifications.
Some of those options can only display one state, others (multiple RGB LEDS on a switch, say) can display several states at once.
Some of the states are more important than others. Also, some of the states are long-lasting status things (like "day mode", "night mode", "party mode", say), and while they might get displaced by other information if only one thing can be displayed, when that other thing is done the state info should return.
Also, the RGB bulbs should only be used in color mode for urgent notifications (severe weather alert, fire alarm), not for unimportant current states.
And...I have no idea how to even start approaching this level of complexity. Or rather I can think of half a dozen ways easily and have no idea which ones would work.
Oh -- and can I have it notify my phone of some things, too? That'd be yet another bit of complexity.
Somebody please tell me this is a mostly-solved problem that I can just install from somewhere! Otherwise it sounds rather a lot like work! (And yes part of the problem is that I don't have exactly what I want in each and every situation laid out clearly.)
I would suggest you start by acknowledging to yourself that this wonât be designed and completed in one fell swoop. Next, list the most important notifications you want and where you want to see them. See what commonalities they may have, what device capabilities exist in the devices in those locations, then begin looking at how you might implement them.
This will evolve as you develop and expand it. Build a core and grow it by continuous improvement. Youâll find you complete the high value (to you) items, and possibly never do the kind of interesting ones, because SQUIRREL! Something more valuable/interesting will appear.
Have fun and let us know if you have any other questions.
And implementing some early ideas (I already have one very small set of notifications happening on one very small set of devices) to see how I like them; my ability to figure out without real experience what will be useful is not, you may be shocked to hear, 100%!
The basic mechanism for making things happen is "triggers", right? Which can be pretty broad? And virtual devices can feature in that. And there are global variables. Haven't looked close, are there any modern data types like hashes or vectors? I'll be rooting around there one of these days (have devices to install and more arriving, too).
I am an engineer, so I get the desire to completely design the complete (dare I say âperfectâ) solution, then begin implementation.
The basic mechanism is a trigger. Something to remember in establishing your triggers is to try not to use âchangedâ as a condition if at all possible. It isnât a very efficient process. Use âis ONâ or âis OFFâ etc.
No, hashes and vectors are not available data types in Rule Manager (RM), nor are the tools/functions available to simulate that. Variables in RM are restricted to Number (integer), Decimal, String, Boolean, and Time.
Yeah, I was kind of expecting I'd be spending a lot of time in that sort of hackish territory!
I'm at least making some progress thinking through what I want. And, sigh, placing more orders -- though this time it's cheaper stuff like stranded 14 gauge, blank brushed stainless faceplates, 19mm buttons, at least.
Not sure how many steps away from working anything is. I think my problem is currently that when I change mode (from day to night, say) the Rule Machine rule that's supposed to set virtual switches doesn't seem to be firing. But I don't know if the problem is the virtual device definitions ("generic component switch"?), or the rule machine rule, or the Switch Dashboard install, or the Switch Dashboard config I set up, or what. (Also, Inovelli LEDs to notify on, not Homeseer currently. For those to work, do I have to have the child device that exposes the LED enabled? Probably?) Oh, and the device entries for the virtual switch don't show it's state, which is kind of annoying for debugging!
Logging shows many actions happening when I change the mode, but NOT any actions on the virtual devices.
[ETA: Simple case, pushing the down paddle on the actual switch, new rule written to set the LED notification red, works fine. So indeed the problem is somewhere with the virtual switch, or the Rules Machine rules that manipulate it. No clue, not even sure I'm using the right device type, see above.]
I specifically looked for "virtual" anything. But it's there now . Best I can guess, the scroll box is so big that the bottom is off the screen usually, and the scroll wheel won't bring things up into visibility if they're visible in the box but actually off the bottom of the screen.
Okay, changed them over, perhaps things will work better!
[ETA: AT least I can now see the state of the virtual switches. Changing the mode manually doesn't do what I expect yet, though. But now I can push deeper, see what I can see.]
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. Best I can guess, the scroll box is so big that the bottom is off the screen usually, and the scroll wheel won't bring things up into visibility if they're visible in the box but actually off the bottom of the screen.
