Totally understand how Groups currently work, and I'm pretty sure I understand Scenes as well. But it seems to me that we're talking here about something else, a variant of Groups, that I'll call "Zones".
To my thinking a Zone is variant of a Group whereby a group device is 'on' if ANY of the members are 'on' and 'off' when ALL of the members are 'off'. More specifically:
the master device is an indicator for the zone, flagging whether ANY in the zone is 'on' versus whether the zone is ALL 'off' (as in, "golly gee, I wonder if there's anything left on in the basement?"); and,
the master device is also a controller that will shutdown all the slaves (as in, "jeez, think I'll just flip this switch and the whole basement will turn off"). In a sense, it's really half of a master because, at least for my use-case, there isn't a need to turn the whole group on. Having half a master also makes building zonification rules much easier.
See above in the thread for the simple pair of rules that operationalizes the Zone concept.
I literally deleted a dozen Groups from my HE setup because I couldn't accomplish this idea, which is essential if one wants Group control with at-a-glance dashboard style status. And then, to my surprise, I learned in this thread that there are others who have astrong text similar need. Bruce, forgive my ignorance (newbie here), are you saying that we can accomplish "Zones", as defined here, via "Scenes". If so, that would be fantastic because, as I sit here now, I don't see how. Which of course is why I resorted to rolling my own RM4's.
Please consider this my +1'ing a feature request: optionally the state of a Group device can be derived from the status of the switches and dimmers in the group, as defined here.
So in a way exactly like Philips Hue does groups and zones. To be honest I find that way more intuitive then the way it is on HE at the moment. I've tried to accomplish it too but never got it working. Also tried with scenes, but I don't see it if it is there. So I settled for a workaround. My wife hates it though. She can't get used to it so she complains about it every now and then.
Is this a platform constraint or an as-programmed application constraint? If it's the latter, I'd still request the behavior change. As stated, the Hubitat implementation is completely different than how other lighting control systems treat light group status.
I think I'm still recovering from an acute case of ST-abusitis. It's a dread disease--I believe many of us have felt the symptoms. So imagine my surprise to be reading the latest HE platform update release notes a moment ago only to see the Hubitat team has added the above group indicator feature. I am blown away. @bravenel, please extend my heartfelt appreciation to the entire team. You guys seriously rock!
I must say, as a new user, discovering groups was amazing, BUT, it was confusing to see a group of white-only bulbs show options for color, even if they don't do anything. I would love an option to set a group as white-only or allow colors to avoid confusion for the users controlling the lights.
If you mean in the dashboard, you use the Dimmer template if you only want to see a level slider. The switch template for on/off only. If you use Bulb or Color Bulb you get the extra options.
In my case, this bulb shows up as having color capabilities in HE. I am using HOOBS to sync those devices through to HomeKit and since it shows up as having color capabilities in HE, it's showing up as a color light in Apple Home. None of the color options in Apple Home do anything, but it's confusing and kind of annoying. None of the bulbs in the group have color capabilities either so I'm confused why it's even showing up like that in HE.
What driver are you using for the bulbs? If your not using built in drivers then you may have picked the wrong one for your bulbs...
If there isnt a different driver available for your bulbs, and you are not using built in drivers (i.e. you installed a user driver for them) then you can edit the driver code and remove the line capability "ColorControl" and it should remove the color capabilities from the interfaces etc.
If your using an inbuilt driver and there isn't a user driver available then you will either have to wait for a fix the devs or a workaround from the community.
Ok, I just did a test using two "Generic Zigbee Bulb" type bulbs that are white-only. The group shows RGB-capable as well so it's not an issue with the Hue Bridge. It feels like a bug to me. I could see if there was 1 or more RGB-capable bulbs in the group that the whole group would get RGB control, but these groups don't have any color bulbs in them at all.
Yeah I'm not sure what if anything going through the bridge changes in relation to bulb capabilities that get reported. This is one for the devs or maybe someone with a huebridge...
I'll tag support for you, maybe @bobbyD can give you some answers
Just as a follow-up, the example above, with the two Generic Zigbee Bulbs is not going through Hue, they are paired directly to HE and they still show as color-capable.
Yeah that driver should have color abilities as well... Sounds like somewhere the bulbs real capabilities are being mis reported. Support or one of our more knowledgeable members about how the drivers set abilities will have to chime in to get you straightened out...
What brand Bulb? My one and only remaining Cree bulb, using the generic zigbee bulb driver shows no color capability in HE. Only level and switch are reported.
These two are Cree white bulbs. (Generic Zigbee) The other group I tested were white Hue lights set up through the Hue Bridge. Individually, all bulbs report level and switch only, the issue is when grouping them together. All the groups show as color-capable which is the main issue here.
All Hue Bridge groups show up as color-capable (and color temperature) on Hubitat. The Hue Bridge doesn't have a good way of reporting the capabilities of groups (rooms/zones) like it does for individual devices. Hubitat could provide a way for you to specify a restricted set, like color temperature or white/dimmable only, but the "easiest" way there would probably be just to provide a separate driver you'd have to manually change to after creation.
If your only concern is HomeBridge, have you tried the "excluded attributes" (color, color temperature, hue, and saturation would be good candidates) or "excluded capabilities" (probably Color and ColorControl) features, at least one of which you're likely to find in whatever HomeBridge integration you're using? That might work to get HomeBridge to see only the "switch" and "level" attributes that you want.
