Here is where I defined one of my groups of shades/blinds
and here is a Rule Machine rule that sets the position of some of the groups
and here is a Rule Machine rule that sets the position of some of the groups
Danabw, after reading all the doc, I got your method to work with one small issue. After triggering the dashboard switch and the blinds open to 90% (set in the scene), when I go back to the App screen it says "Morning Open (Not Set)" . If I "Re-capture Scene" then it changes back to "Morning Open (On)" Did I miss a step/option to lock in the settings?
Good to hear.
The app page in the browser may just need a refresh (Ctrl-R or right-click reload) to show the current state...displayed state may not update in the UI right away. If the shades are opening as expected, then you should be fine.
I had to back out all the multi-shade automation. When I used the "Group and Scene", while it worked it did not update the individual blind dashboard tiles, so we had no way to know what percent the blinds were at (a key requirement for us). The key is to find automation that when grouping, still uses the same Device driver "Springs Window Fashions Roller Shade".
The easiest for new people like me would be if Hubitat added a "Group - Shade" using our device driver. This way, the group level tile would indicate the percent open/close (although it may not update the individual shade tiles).
If I understand Alexcapone's parent/child code, I think it would update a group tile open/close level, so when I get more time (break from home repairs) I will attempt to figure out how to trigger the code from a virtual shade tile on the dashboard.
I have implemented the Shade Control app provided by bravenel/alexcapone to combine two yoolax shaded into a single shade control. I am using the generic zigbee shade driver for these two blinds. My intent is to be able to control both blinds with a single command to Alexa.
I can open and close the shades using the device panel for the virtual device. However, I cannot set a position between open and close. When I enter a number into the position button, It fully opens the shades. This does work correctly on the individual blinds.
Am I missing something? Maybe this is not possible but from what I read it seemed to be possible.
The other issue is I cannot control the virtual from Alexa. Although Alexa has the virtual defined as a shade, and she says ok when told to open or close, it never results in the shades moving. I can go into Alexa and use the slider control for the device but again nothing ever happens. Maybe this is not possible as well.
Use the built-in Room Lighting app instead. That code was provided well before it's existence.
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I have looked at using Room Lighting but unless I am missing something it would only allow me to have predefined shade positions that I would then trigger from a virtual device. Which may be what I will have to do.
My intent was to be able to tell Alexa what position I wanted and control both blinds to that position.
You can use Room Lighting to just group them. Select the option to use an activator device, then expose it to Alexa.
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Doh!.... I pursued using the code provided in the posts above. I even started digging into the code itself and started learning more about drivers and applications. So I learned a lot while trying to resolve this issue. I finally concluded the virtual device was never going to work the way I needed it to as it was not going to ever update with the correct status.... Then the light went on
I had created a virtual device for the Shade Control app but used a physical shade driver for the device. Once I discovered that I changed the driver to the Virtual Shade driver. Low and behold all is working the way that I needed it too. Wow. At least I learned enough that I might be able to write my own Apps and drivers in the near future... Too bad I can't use PASCAL.
Thanks FriedCheese2006 for trying to find a solution for me.
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For those coming across this topic and wondering like I did - Note that if you create the activator device with a shade in room lighting app, it creates a "Room Lights Activator Shade" device (instead of Lights), which makes it export to Alexa and HomeKit with all of the regular functionality of an individual shade, which is great.
UPDATE: Room Lights doesn't work as great as I had originally thought. The issue is that the App reports "Active" as open, inactive as closed. Therefore, if you set up different periods like I tried, since the blinds get set to the period, the app shows as Active, and thus the blinds show as open. (Other indicator settings don't work because there is no on/off capability with blinds.) Looks like I'm going to need to keep this as a basic Room Lighting app for voice control and have no periods. I'll need to write my own Rule to close them based on illuminance when the sun starts to enter in the afternoon.
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Not sure I understand...are you saying that the blinds always show as open regardless of their actual status, so you can't see accurate open/close status?
Can you explain how the issue affects your ability to control the blinds? If it's that the blinds aren't responding to a period change, does using the Command Devices Irrespective of Reported State option help at all?
The activator device for the blinds treats "Active" as Open and "Not Active" as Closed, regardless of the state of the blinds. So if I have one period set to have the blinds at 0 (closed), and another period set to have the blinds at 100 (opened), then regardless of the state of the blinds, the activator device shows the blind state as opened since the room lighting app is "Active" (all set per table) during both of the periods.
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I tried using @alexcapone 's applications above, creating a virtual shade as the control, and two Lutron shades as the child shades. When I try to close the virtual shade, I get the error: "Device 542 generates excessive hub load"
Any ideas on how to debug / fix this?
I have been meaning to post on this for some time now. I have a combination of z-wave and zigbee shades in the house. I never have an issue with the Z-wave shades but the zigbee shades do not always respond to commands - no matter how much I work on the mesh and repeaters. For example I have two rooms that each have 5 shades and I will be lucky if 4 out of 5 respond.
I had started to work on a derivation of a "wrapper" for locks to do something similar for a shade - [HELP NEEDED] Reliable Shades App. The idea is that you call the wrapper and it checks to see if the shade responded and did what it said it was going to do. I did get it mostly working but largely gave up and just did it through rules.
This of course is only relevant for folks who's shades don't always respond to commands.
