Question about grouping switches

I have 3 z-wave switches that each power a set of floodlights outside the house. The 3 switches are in a group called floodlights. I have created 2 rules as follows:

When flood-1 or flood-2 or flood-3 turns on, turn on floodlight group.
When flood-1 or flood-2 or flood-3 turns off, turn off floodlight group.

While this works correctly, I noticed in the logs that it results in the rule triggering more than anticipated. For example, turning on flood-1 fires the rule which turns on the others. This causes the rule to fire 2 more times as flood-2 and flood-3 are turned on. Is there a way to prevent this?

If you have a triggered rule and have the condition be that any of the floodlights are on. That coupled with setting the rules Private boolean to False and then delayed back to True after a second or two should keep the rule from firing only once. However, you might want to look at some of the apps around that sync the switches, rather than creating a group. I know there are some out there that accomplish syncing without the use of a "master" device, the the HE groups do.

You might also just look at creating a rule that turns them all on if any of them are and another than turns them off if any of them turn off, which is what essentially you want. You'd have two "Triggered Rules" apps in Rule machine. One with the trigger of any of them turning on with the condition that they are all off, the other with the trigger of any of them turning off when all of them are on.

Maybe try this app?

This is how I have it now and it works fine. I just noticed in the logs that the rule fires for each bulb as the rule turns the additional bulbs on. Doesn't seem to cause any issues, just wondering if there is a better way.

Definitely try out my Switch Bindings app. It's a very simple install, does exactly what you want, and won't cause the repeated event firings that you're seeing with RM rules.

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