I have been trying to use a Lutron Aurora controller but am struggling to get rational behavior from it, which leaves me wondering if the device is no good, or if I'm somehow doing it wrong in HE. I'm wondering if anyone else has had similar weirdness from this device.
I set it up as the source device in a Mirror Me app, and set two Sengled bulbs as the slaves. Dimming is pretty hit or miss, perhaps something to do with the battery-powered state of the Aurora, it's fairly dead-to-me because of this but at least I can (sort of) explain it.
However, most times when I click the Aurora, one of the Sengleds will perform the expected command (either switch on, or switch off), while the other will do nothing. Subsequent on and off clicks will just make the two bulbs alternate from each other. This also happens if I make a zigbee group and set that to be the singular slave device.
The fact that one bulb responds demonstrates that the click did get detected ... so why it was relayed to only one of the bulbs makes no sense. A virtual button used to control these same bulbs works completely reliably.
(additional weird note, sometimes a bulb will detect the click but instead of turning off will dim and assume a color temperature of about 5000K ... mystifying)
I have this setup working with a single bulb. Maybe it’s something wonky with having two? Could you put the two bulbs in a group and make the group the slave?
Did you enable Zigbee Group Messaging on the group? Just something else to try. Doing so sends a single Zigbee message to the grouped bulbs, as opposed to individual messages per bulb.
Oh...another option would be to change the driver being used by the Sengled bulbs. If you're bulbs are using the "Sengled..." driver, try changing to the appropriate "Generic Zigbee..." driver.
The Sengled specific drivers have some extra code in them to try to make them behave more like other bulbs. My hypothesis is that this driver may result in additional Zigbee messaging. Using the "Generic Zigbee Bulb" or the "Generic Zigbee RGBW Light" might help improve the performance. After changing the driver and clicking SAVE, please be sure to click CONFIGURE on each device that you modified.
Could be something to try ... getting on a tangent I only just realized the Aurora clicks are 'switch' actions that are on and off. Dummy me was thinking of it in terms of a button press just toggling, so this may ultimately not even work for my situation (motion lighting, but with the Aurora to prevent folks from turning off the wall switch).
Anyway, here are screens of logged events ... started with everything off, but bulbs pre-staged identically. I clicked the Aurora once, capped the logs, then clicked it again. (motion rule paused throughout troubleshooting btw)
ok, seems like the issue was on me. One of the bulbs had been used in a different location previously and had some vestigial links to RM rules (duh). Cleaned them up and it seems the weirdness has gone.
Still, the fact that a click is really a switch specifically turning on or off is trouble for me. I guess I'll have to use RM instead of Mirror, although I'm uncertain how dimming will work. Would be nice if Mirror would let you be selective in which particular attributes to follow.
Thanks everyone for your time, helped me focus and analyze things a bit more properly.
Is there any chance that the Mirror Me App keeps the Aurora switch status updated when the group of bulbs is updated? Is Mirror Me two-way? That would be nice, but potentially complicated. I have never used it.
Tagging @mike.maxwell as I believe he knows quite a bit about the Mirror Me Hubitat App.
I've been thinking it does not. The issue for me is that if the light is on via Motion, sometimes it takes two clicks of the Aurora to make it turn the light off (to get in sync).
For now I have set RM to toggle the light group switch on Aurora button 1 push... but can't figure out a way to configure dimming via RM.
I suppose one could make an additional Mirror rule that reverses the master-slave relationship ... although I might be afraid of breaking space-time doing something radical like that lol.
Maybe you could use RM to simply keep the Aurora's Switch status matching the Group Device's Switch status instead?
Trigger: BulbGroupDevice Switch is Changed
Action:
If BulbGroupDevice is ON Then
Aurora ON
Else
Aurora OFF
ENDIF
This way, if the bulbs are changed via some other means, the Aurora's Switch status would still match that of the Group. Then, the MirrorMe app would still be synchronized, at least for the 'switch status'
The Lutron Aurora is not responding to software commands. (on, off, level) Including from RM, and from interactive soft-button pushes on the device page in the HE Web GUI.
I turned on debug logging and clicked configure, the log output is just
I wonder if it is only one-way, from the Lutron Aurora to the Hubitat Hub. That would explain it. I wonder if it behaves the same, or differently, on a Philips Hue bridge. That's where I have seen most users use them.
Starting to look that way, did some reading of other threads and seeing some familiar observations.
Guess I'll just install a guard over the light switch and live with the motion-sensing only. I don't really need a dimmer in the laundry room anyway.
I've actually moved to a house with no toggle switches for me to attach an Aurora to, so it no longer affects me either way. Although I did test it once with the Hue hub and it worked amazingly well there.
Out of curiosity, what was your reason for writing the custom driver? Have you tweaked some behaviors?
I don't have toggle switches either, actually I don't have a house with any automation, but I will in October when my new house will be finished. To prepare for that I have started learning about HE and testing some devices (and building some others too )
I'm planning to use them because I couldn't find any other decent physical dimmer. I plan to attach them directly to the wall somehow, if I don't find a better device. I'm not in love with the Lutron Aurora, it has lots of flaws actually.
I don't plan to use Hue Bridge or smart bulbs, I just need a physical dimmer device, compatible with Zigbee to use directly on HE, with a decent design.
With this context, here is the answer to your question:
The main difference from the official driver is the ability to set the level, so when you turn the knob, no matter which device or automation changed the level before, it will continue from there.
If you are interested, there are more details in the topic I've created.
)
