Hello, I have several Hubitats in my life, but recently setup one in a restaurant.
-Whoever shows up in the morning turns on all the lights manually.
-When it's time for Service, I want to set all the lights to a specific dim level
-At sunset, I want to dim all the lights to a lower dim level
-After the last customer leaves, they want to manually bring all the lights to full power to clean up
-Once they're done, they manually turn off the lights and leave.
Is this an application for modes, or scenes? Technically if using modes, if the staff manually turn off all the lights, they're leaving the system in "sunset after service" mode, which is technically incorrect.
I am currently doing it with modes, but I'm finding the mode manager, and the rules around it really tax the CPU on the Hubitat and make it extremely flakey. Sometimes the lights go on, sometimes they don't. Sometimes one or 2 go on, and sometimes they don't. It's not a Zwave problem, I can manually control the lights from the dashboard no problem.
What kind of lights are you using. Are they zigbee/Zwave/Wifi? Or do you use a single light switch to control them all? Do you use color or effects, or is it just one color and then dim level?
I would think modes most likely if it is just dim level. I modes would be closed, pre service, service. Then a rule that changes the dim level Sunset to whatever you want it at with a restrict to only work when in service mode.
If you are using Zwave are you on the latest hub firmware and updated the zwave radio. how many bulbs are we talking about?
Probably a good fit for the new Room Lighting app. From there, you can set modes based on a mix of things. Something along the lines of:
Opening - triggered by motion during a certain time window or when the first switch is turned on in the morning
Business - set by time that they open for customers
Sunset - Set by sunset
LastCustomer - Maybe designate a switch or a button to trigger this one
Shutdown - Again...designated switch
As for the sporadic issues, I've had similar experiences and fixed it one of two ways. Enabled metering to space out the commands and/or disable optimizations.
I don't use scenes at all (I use modes), but you could probably set lights where you want them, then capture the scene for cleaning, daytime and evening. Then it would be a matter of setting rules or a master switch/button to trigger the scenes. I prefer automation, but you'll still get manual control with switches. You can also create lighting groups controlled by a single switch as well. That could help here, too.
Maybe motion sensors (in the kitchen?) and a rule to turn everything on with the first motion in the morning and off 15 minutes after there's no motion after close?
I also use webCoRE for my rules and I love the very gradual dimming I can do with it. You could go from daytime to evening lighting over 15 minutes and never notice the lights change.
Thank you all - some great ideas here. I am using Leviton DZ6HD Z-Wave switches which are all in banks behind the bar. I'll check out the room app, and look at metering to space out commands. One thing I forgot to mention is that most of the staff naturally want to 'turn the lights on and off' with the actual switches. Training them to use an app, or a designated switch would be challenging. There are many of them, and not all of them have English as a first language. I guess I could have 1 of the switches in the bank arbitrarily bring on night mode when it's turned off. Just have to sort out this cleanup mode - maybe one switch bring brought up to full power would trigger the mode? Have to think about that one. I also could look at presence for the end of the day.
