I am wondering if there's an easier way to have just one rule for all the button presses from an single inovelli switch? I mean, with an inovelli switch in my daughter bedroom, one press up to turn on the ceiling downlights, press down to turn those off (smart lights, so the physical switch will be disabled). held up to dim up, held down to dim down. double press up to turn on her other smart table light, double down to turn that off. she has fairy lights strung across the wall so 3 up to turn that one on, three down to turn it off. I suppose four down to turn all of that. Do I need to have 9 separate rules in the rule machine to do that, or could we do that with just one rule?
You can absolutely put these all in one rule! I'm not sure what you're doing right now, but the easiest way to do something like this in Rule Machine is to use a "Button Device" trigger. Note that this is different from "Button," where you will indeed pretty much have to make a separate rule for each event. "Button Device" gives you separate actions sections for each button possibility, basically a more powerful version of the built-in Button Controller app that you might also want to look at if you don't need the power of RM (but they're otherwise almost the same, minus some RM features like conditionals and variables).
To get all of the button presses be sure you have the driver from Inovelli loaded. I just started into all of this too and was very confused at first as some of the drivers HE loads when you first include a device say they are an Inovelli device, but apparently were written by Hubitat, not Inovelli. When I went to create a rule to control them not all the various # of button clicks were there. (And BTW, button 2 is really a double click, button 3 a triple click, etc.)
To check which driver is loaded go to Devices, then click the link for the device. The driver is listed as its "Type" near the bottom. (It took me a while too to figure out that "Type" meant the driver. I wish they were much more consistent with their naming conventions). If it is the Inovelli driver it will say something like LZW31-SN for the Red series dimmer, etc.
After you are sure you have the correct driver the advice to create rule for a button device, not just a button, is 100% right.
Once the button device is created and you are adding what switches it controls and what to do with it/them I found it much cleaner to add the buttons one at a time with a push (paddle up) or held (paddle down) event instead of having them pre-filled in. If you pre-fill them you'll get a push and held for 1-8, most of which you won't be using probably and makes it that much harder to read (especially in my case where I often just use Button 1 push/held and Button 7 pushed).
I've been going back and forth on using 1 rule or multiple rule for various actions. For example, I like to use button 7, the small button to the side which is the Config/Favorite button, to set my lights to a low dim level. I also then create a rule for a button 1 push to turn them to 100% so I can go from them being dim to them fully on without having to turn them off first. (Just pushing the paddle up won't do it as an up push with no rule only turns them on, and they are already on if I pushed button 7 first, albeit at a dim level). Some of my switches control lights they aren't physically connected to (besides in a typical 3 way situations that I handle with "Associations"). So I need a button 1 held even to turn the lights off. Sometimes I've created 3 rules: Button 1 pushed, Button 1 held, and Button 7 pushed. At other times I put them in 1 rule. As far as I can tell it doesn't really make a difference speed-wise and is more a matter of personal preference. Putting them all in one makes for a shorter list of Rules but can make editing just 1 part a tiny bit more tricky and usually results in a much longer rule name so you can tell yourself what all this rule does.
Hope this helps,
Stuart
