So I just got a few LIFX A19 color bulbs to fool around/learn with. But now I’ve encountered an issue that I’m not sure how to deal with. I’m sure it’s a common problem but…
Situation: Smart bulb gets turned off by dumb switch and unknowing person. Obviously automation doesn’t work and I find out by the light not turning on. Ugh…
So is there a way that I can have Hubitat inform me to go turn on the dumb switch cause it got turned off? Or is there a better approach? How does having a smart bulb turned off by a dumb switch effect my automation rules? Do they “fail” without notification, except maybe a line in the log? Does that stop the entire RM rule from progressing, or just the action directed at the bulb?
I’m not ready to change the switch(es) to smart switches, and is that even a good idea? A smart bulb on a smart switch?
You can see I’m new at this and just finding my way right now but searches really haven’t given me an answer at this point. I know there’s lots of knowledge here so please fill me in to the how’s and why’s of my situation. Thanks,
That’s what I do.. Many switches allow you to disable the relay and always send power, but use as a button controller to turn off the bulbs.
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Could you point me more to info on this? What switches, how to disable the relay, etc…
Any thoughts on my other questions? Thanks!
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Both Zooz and Inovelli allow this.. I forget what Inovelli calls it, but in zooz it’s called “smart bulb mode” in the configuration.
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It's pretty much a silent failure, even in the logs. With debug logs on, you could deduce that no events are received, even in response to the "poll" sent to the device to confirm the state shortly after the command.
For RM, it fires the command to the device within Hubitat, then moves on - whether or not the command is actually successful on the physical device is not relevant to RM.
Hacking around the problem a bit, you could perhaps "enable color pre-staging", and have a recurring rule that adjusts a parameter, e.g. capture state, set level to 99, wait 5s, check level = 99, restore state... Assuming that the captured state never has a level=99, if the check doesn't match, this would (usually) indicate that the bulb was offline...
That said, like @bcopeland mentioned, I use the zooz zen71 switches in "smart bulb mode" with all of my lifx lights - so the power never actually gets cut when someone turns the switch "off". You can use the built-in Mirror Me app on Hubitat to replicate the "on" event from the switch to send an "on" command to the bulb (or use a community app like Switch Bindings, or build your own rules around this)
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