Hello all, been lurking quite a while and making use of the information here, however I've hit a wall with something. Hoping I can get bit of assistance.
I've had my HE in place about 3 months, and in the grand scheme I'm pretty green to all this. I have Lutron Caseta for lights and I've been working for about a week on my first slightly more complex automation with no joy. What I'm ultimately trying to do is be able to issue a verbal command to Alexa and have it turn on all the lights in the path from my kid's room, up the stairs, through the family room and into the kitchen, but starting dimmed and then raising up to 100% over like 15 minutes. Goes without saying all devices in this chain are standard Caseta Dimmers.
The Alexa bit is irrelevant in this case as I'm just trying to get the basic automation down. So far what I've got is a virtual dimmer set to the minimum threshold of my lights of 15%, then a rule in RM with my virtual dimmer as the trigger and the action of "Fade Family Room Ceiling, Kitchen Ceiling, Lower Hallway up to 100 over 20 minutes with 1.0 seconds interval". I have the Gradually Raise Level ticked and no delay set. I've tried variations of this in Simple Automation Rules as well.
The end result is the logs show the virtual dimmer does trigger the rule, but no lights and no log entries after that. I did have one instance where just the kitchen lights turned and it did show up in the log as increasing the brightness every so often, but I can't seem to nail down whatever I changed if anything in that instance.
If you paste in a screenshot of your Rule, it will help as many around here will try to duplicate what you have and debug it, and report back. I know you're new and are not yet allowed to post images yet. But for the future, remember to grab a screen cap and debug logs.
I just tried this same thing on a lutron dimmer and it does seem to work ok... I'm watching the level slowly click up over time. Though it is a bit like watching paint dry. I only get log updates when the % goes up by 1 so I suspect the 1 second interval really is too short to make a difference.
What happens if you turn logging on for the device itself and instead of triggering the rule just run rule actions? I'm wondering a bit about that "digital" in the trigger though you said the logs do show the rule triggers. I'm also wondering if a command every second is just overwhelming the telnet inteterface... would be curious to see what happens if you slow it down to 20 seconds or so.
I had tried the default 10 second interval and changed it 1 just as an experiment. I went ahead and changed it to 20 though and it made no difference. I just ran the rule directly and you're correct it did work now. My trigger says digital as it's a virtual dimmer. I used that so I can name it something that translates well into a voice command, i.e. "Alexa time for school". So I guess the question is what the failing in the virtual dimmer is.
So is the "digital" simply part of the virtual dimmer name? Or are you looking for a "digital" change in the dimmer as opposed to a "physical" change? Some switch drivers make a distinction.
Also with the added benefit of being able to set the minimum threshold to what my bulbs are. As it is the rule itself starts at 1%, so I don't see any light immediately.
Yeah exactly, when I created the virtual dimmer it just adds that moniker itself.
Hmmm I wasnt able to replicate that. But here's what I'd try... use a virtual switch instead of a dimmer as your trigger and have Alexa just turn on the virtual switch. Make the virtual switch turn off automatically after a few seconds. And just use the plain ol' "switch" trigger - not digital or physical.
That's how I've been testing it, I haven't tried to implement the Alexa part of it yet. I had also tried flipping it a virtual switch already as well, but without the 1s shutoff. Same thing, I just get an extra log entry when it turns it off now.
yeah no I dont think you want to do that. The only thing you need the virtual switch for is to trigger RM. Other than that it does nothing. Try changing it to just a virtual switch with 1-second auto-off, modify your RM trigger, turn logging on for the lutron device, and give it a whirl.
