Before I get too far involved I'm trying to work out the best setup for my lights. I'm in the process of switching most of my lights across to Hue. In most rooms these were previously multiple ceiling downlights connected to a Z Wave dimmer behind the switch (Fibaro Dimmer 2). The dimmer is getting excluded and a Hue Dimmer fitted to the wall over the switch (wires linked out behind)
I'm using the Hue Bridge V2 (may replace at Xmas with the pro due to number of devices). All bulbs are paired to that Hub, as is (or will be) a Hue dimmer in each room. I'd like to keep it that way so that when the Hubitat hub is down for any reason (updating, rebooting) and automation is not working, manual control is possible via the Hue Dimmer switches. I'm using the Hubitat native Hue Bridge Integration in order to use Room Lighting for automation of lights in most rooms.
Q1 - Unless I'm missing something (I probably am), it seems difficult to configure the Hue Dimmer in the Hue app while keeping the 'Hue' button (4) unused so that I can set that up solely for use in Hubitat. You have to give it a function in the Hue app, it won't permit a 'do nothing'. So far the only workaround I've come up with is to have a bulb added that's not used and set the Hue button to turn that unused bulb off. Then I can add an action for pushed and/or held in RM or Button Controller to do something else.
Q2 - I'm struggling a bit with Room Lighting. If I manually turn on a group from either the Hue Dimmer or from Apple Home app directly, is Room Lighting 'aware' that the group is on and how would it handle it? I'm trying to avoid a situation where I manually turn on a scene from the Hue Dimmer, but then Room Lighting sets something different when motion is detected moments later.
Q3 - What would be the best way of disabling/pausing automation in a room. Previously I had rules that when the Fibaro Dimmer was used manually, physical switch would flip a boolean that I'd reference in Room Lighting. This is used so that if we're sat still in a room and want the lights to stay on, they will. At the moment I've just added a virtual switch that can be turned on and is used much like the boolean was in Room Lighting.
As I just woke up, this hopefully won't be an unintelligible mess. I'm also going to pick ones I have experience with.
Q2 - I have a condition on the rule that if one of the lights (I pick one that is activated in every scene) is on, don't run the rule to activate the scene with motion. Also, I used to add a virtual switch for each scene and set that to on if that scene was activated so HomeKit had an indicator which scene was used. All the other scenes would turn off all the other virtual switches when switching scenes. I think I also had that switch drive the activation of the scene from HomeKit.
Q3 - This is how I used to quickly disable/pause a rule. I had a virtual switch that was toggled using a button (aeotec or pico or something) for "manual" control.
You need to use a third party Hue app like iConnectHue or Hue4All, which would this. The regular Hue app doesn’t.
Have the Hue group be a Means to Turn On and a Means to Turn Off. This would both turn on and off Room Lighting if you are controlling them via other means.
The virtual switch would work. You could also play with the disable motion with level change options that might work too.
Thanks. I'll have a mess around with one room and see how I get on. There are some locations I'll need to use something other than the Hue Dimmer as there are not enough buttons. For example, our bedside's need control of the main lights including dimming, a reading light and a night light. I'm new to using buttons but quickly realised you can't generate a 'released' without a 'held' and you can't generate a 'held' without a 'push' (should've been obvious to me!) That makes the 4 buttons on the Hue Dimmer limiting. In some cases it's just going to work better if I configure the buttons through Hubitat Button Controller.
I'll stick with my weird workaround for the 'Hue' button as I'd rather keep it as simple as possible and not use another app. I can probably use that 'Hue' button 'held' in a rule to toggle a virtual switch or variable that'll be used to prevent activation in the Room Lighting instance. I can add 'flash' as an action that'll provide visual feedback.
I'll add the Hue group in means to turn on/off as advised. That didn't occur to me and I was looking at adding the activator device rather than the group top dashboards.
I have had one instance already where a group was turned off in Hue but it didn't update Apple Home where they appeared to still be on. I'm using Homebridge to get my Hubitat devices in Home, but have linked Hue and Homekit directly (outside of Homebridge). I probably need to look a bit more at that setup, as grouping the multiple downlights to act as one in Home is resulting in some very annoying popcorning of the lights.
Remind me where you are based out of. Some of these scenarios are why I have Inovelli White Smart dimmers to help but keep the Hue buttons/dimmers only on the Hue Hub.
I'm in the UK so we're limited for options (otherwise I'd have gone for a Lutron hub with Picos). I'll probably keep Hue Dimmers at each room entrance, keeping them paired to Hue, then use some other Zigbee multi buttons paired with Hubitat dotted around for calling scenes and multi device control.
In my never ending attempt to simplify my smart home I seem to keep making it more complicated every time I make a change
Yes and no. One nice benefit you have is access to some of the UK/EU options that stay contained within Hue. I’d look at Philips Hue: Supported lights and devices (Hue compatible) | iConnectHue and see if any of the Friends of Hue devices meet your needs. A lot of these devices are not available in North America so some might fit your needs. Using a Wall Switch Module would turn your light switch into a Hue button while also having your dimmers as well.
