Next release.
4 Likes
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!
And thanks for curing my disease.
2 Likes
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.
Is this something you might consider adding?
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.
They are set up as hueBridgeBulb. These particular ones are white-only dimmable bulbs.
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 
I added my Hue stuff directly to Apple Home (and HE) and just add non Hue devices to Homebridge. The group device has always been that way afaik
That works except all of my automation happens in HE so I need them there too.
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.
I just wanted to add my experience as well.
I have grouped a couple of smart plugs which are obviously not color capable, and they also report as color capable in homebridge.
Today, I decided to try to hide the color capabilities in the homebridge makerapi config.json using excluded_capabilities, but that doesn't work either.
Bringing this back up as I am having the same issue with Sengled Element Classic white-only bulbs. Once grouped, they should as RGB capable. Any fix?
I'm having a similar issue. I have two Z-wave plugs (Jasco plugs using "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch" as the driver). The plugs themselves are obviously only switches. However, when I create a group (a Switch type group) out of two of them, the group has a "Group Bulb Dimmer-2.1" type, and has options for colors, level, etc.
There don't seem to be any non-dimmer group types for me to choose instead. I tried choosing "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch" for the group and that did not function. Any way for me to get color/level out of this group, and make it on/off only?
No, this is just how the Groups part of Groups and Scenes works in Hubitat--the resulting group device gets exposed as one with maximum capabilities (color control, etc.) regardless of the individual "member device" capabilities. Using another driver--and certainly a "real" Z-Wave driver--will not work. Hubitat would need to update Groups to accommodate less-capable devices, which I can only assume comes with its own set of challenges (e.g., if you add a device with greater capabilities to the group later or remove one and now the resulting set has less, should the driver change without user intervention?).
Someone wrote a custom app that lets you create "group" devices with arbitrary capabilities, but I can't find it at the moment (anyone have a link?). I'm pretty sure no one besides Hubitat has done anything with Zigbee group messaging, which in my experience usually works better than not using it, but since all your Z-Wave devices are fine I imagine the experience would be about the same either way. You could also bypass this idea entirely and just make your own "group" device (say, a virtual switch--or a pair of buttons if you don't care about state) coupled with a rule to manipulate the "real" devices (and the state of the group device) as you see fit.
