Yeah, it appears groups won't work. They're Hue groups not Hubitat groups, but the Hubitat device page doesn't show the start/stop commands. I don't know if it's supported on the Hue side and Hubitat just hasn't done it for groups or not.
Even your app seems more complex than what I'm talking about. I basically want to say: this remote controls these lights, and not have to worry about the individual buttons at all. On, off, up, down should all be self explanatory. There can be more options or the ability to change the defaults, but there should be an easy way to set all the intuitive functions (on, off, brighten, dim) without me having to go in and set up each button.
The only button to manually configure I guess is the favorite/round button in the middle.
Thanks for the app! It looks like it's almost what I want. Maybe if I have time (hah!) I can do it and submit a pull request.
I have discovered that in Hubitat Button Controller, groups will switch, but groups are not an option for dimming. Might be an oversight in development that has never come up. It would also be nice to have a toggle dimmer per mode, as the only option is set dimmer per mode. Just my 2 cents from past BC experience.
So - I'm REALLY new to HE, but I actually just bit the bullet and got it last week because of this thread. I already have Hue and RRa2 and love the little Pico remotes, so the idea of being able to do this and give the kids a wireless remote that'll control their bunk bed lights seemed pretty interesting. However, I'm SO new to HE, I don't know how any of this works yet... I've never added a driver or done much of anything with it. So far it's just monitoring a couple z-wave outlets and locks.
For this to work, will it be monitoring the Pico via my RRa2 bridge, or do I just skip that step and pair the remotes directly to the HE? If the latter, how's the range?
I hope to learn soon - so hopefully I can contribute soon - but I gotta wrap my head around all this first... Thanks all for your efforts!
The above reply tells you how to get the Pico integrated into Hubitat (to summarize, the remotes pair to the Lutron system and are integrated through an app you install in Hubitat).
Dimmer Button Controller is an app, not a driver (apps are basically automation templates you can plug devices and other parameters into; drivers tell Hubitat how to communicate with devices). This will matter for how you install it, which may seem daunting your first time (it's probably under "Advanced" for a reason) but is otherwise similar to using a native/stock app after that--just add/install an instance of the app and choose your options. You don't need Dimmer Button Controller if you'd rather use stock apps--Rule Machine (also daunting if you're new) or Button Controller can both handle this. I just found them to be too much clicking when each button does the same light(s), so I wrote this to make it easier.
Do be warned: Hue is extremely fast. You can mash the "On" button on the Hue Dimmer five times quickly to get to your fifth scene more or less immediately. Hubitat takes a bit more time, both to register/count the button presses and to communicate with Hue over the LAN (if that's the system you're using, but really this would happen with any protocol). Nothing crazy long, but I'd limit your presses to 2-3 per second.
No, that's completely unrelated. That appears to be related to whether the group device in Hubitat shows as on or off based on states of individual group members. This is an app meant to facilitate the use of button devices to control lights, individually or, to some extent, as party of groups or scenes--basically an easier way than using Rule Machine or Button Controller where you have to keep specifying the devices for each button when you want it the same for all of them.
I've released a small update, v1.9, to the child app as well as an optional (cosmetic-only) update to the parent app. The most notable change in the child app is that I've now added the ability to activate Hue Bridge scenes if you're using my CoCoHue app as a Hue Bridge integration. This is as an alternative to manually specifying bulb/group settings or using Hubitat scenes, both of which are already (and still remain) options in the app. I find activating Hue scenes via the Bridge is much faster than specifying settings through this app (or Hubitat scenes) for each bulb/group.
You can just use CoCoHue for scenes if you want (there's no requirement to integrate bulbs or groups if you don't want to, and you could leave CoCoHue polling disabled in that case). However, there are other benefits to using this, like being able to use a Hue Bridge group in Dimmer Button Controller and having startLevelChange and stopLevelChange available to you, which Hubitat's integration implements only for Bridge bulbs. This makes the "dim/brighten while held" options work for Hue groups, so you can leave individual bulbs out of the equation entirely here with Hue scenes and Hue groups.
Fair warning, I will probably re-write the app sometime soon, and I'm not sure existing instances will be able to be upgraded (I won't break this app, but it might be like Rule Machine where you can see and modify old rules but not create new ones under old versions, and if you're obsessive about having everything the same version, this may bother you). I might implement Hue scenes directly into the app without the need to create a Hubitat device for them (open to suggestions if anyone would find that useful). My main goal would be to revamp the UI or at least the (messy) code that currently creates it. No timeline, just a heads-up. I'm going to re-create as much as I can on this version though, now that I've got all my Hue lights, groups, and (some) scenes set up via CoCoHue.
I have a pico and am setting it up to control a set of Hue lights.
On/Off/Scenes (buttons 1,3,5) work when I create a rule for the GROUP of lights
dimming does not (and startlevelchange isn't supported by a GROUP name)
Alternatively, I changed the rule to control the 4 individual bulbs rather than the group name
This works relatively well, but a couple of things I haven't worked out
Lights on turns them on individually with a slight delay in between each light.
I think I can probably address this by setting up two rules under Dimmer Button Controller and having buttons 1/3/5 operate against the GROUP in one rule and remove 1/3/5 from the existing rule that works against the 4 BULBS instead of a group name.
(Update: this worked, if there's a more elegant way to solve it LMK please)
dimmer is a) SLOOOOOOWWWW and b) doesn't work when lights are off. Ie you cant turn off lights then dim up slightly, you have to turn them on full blast, then dim them down. Haven't figured out how to solve this.
(Update: just tested brighten while off with a Hue controller and what I'm trying to do doesn't work with that either, so I can live with it as)
I guess that leaves my only question, is there a way to speed up dim/brighten?
Thanks for putting this together, before I found this I was tediously working through rule machine.
Honestly, my incredibly biased recommendation would be to use my custom Hue Bridge integration, which supports startLevelChange and stopLevelChange on groups:
Then you wouldn't need to use individual bulbs at all (and you'd get the ability to cycle through real Hue scenes like the Hue Dimmer can without emulating this in Hubitat). But I used this app for a long time as you are now before that, using inidividual bulbs with Hubitat's stock integration. The delay between bulbs is inevitable--Hubitat has to send them one by one, then the Hue Bridge likely does the same. I noticed a small "popcorn effect" as you do but nothing too severe.
Hue bulbs do not respond to startLevelChange(up) (to dim up) when off. As it looks like you've figured out, they have to be on for any of the "level change" commands to work. (A setLevel would turn it on, but you can't do that in one fell swoop with my app; you'd need a separate action for that.) I'm not sure about the other half your point 2, the slowness. With four bulbs, you may again notice a "popcorn effect" with all bulbs needing to get the start and then stop commands individually, but beyond that, it should be the same that you see by manually initiating the same commands (startLevelChange with up/down and stopLevelChange) on the device page. The only other thing I can think of is that if your hub is slowed down for any other reason (e.g., runaway custom app or driver or general sluggishness for any reason), this problem would be exacerbated.
But again, I think using a group in CoCoHue would solve most of this.
For the error: I need to add a check in the off actions for that, but the error is harmless (just means you haven't selected additional "off-only" bulbs, just the regular ones).
I am using CoCoHue, in fact it's required for Dimmer Button Controller (i think, at least the docs says so). The nice part about Dimmer Button Controller is it's all set up to easily handle Picos. I deleted the stock Hubitat Hue integration and replaced it with yours. If it's designed to handle startLevelChange up/down on a group, not sure why it doesn't work when selecting a CoCoHue exposed group with Dimmer Button Controller.
CoCoHue isn't required for Dimmer Button Controller (I wrote both apps) unless you want to use it to activate CoCoHue scenes, but I think it works better with it regardless.
Dimmer Button Controller should work with startLevelChange on CoCoHue groups. It will not work with Hubitat groups (nothing will because they don't implement these commands since they could contain a variety of devices that wouldn't all consistently respond). This is true even if that Hubitat group contains CoCoHue bulbs. Can you verify that you're using a CoCoHue Group (created through the CoCoHue app)?
If not, that's the problem; if so, feel free to turn on debug logging or and send me a screenshot of your logs, or at least see if there are any errors. Sorry for the troubles--I'm definitely interested in finding the source of this problem. I have several automations like this set up that work for me.
I will double check later today, I may have inadvertently used the Hue group instead of CoCoHue group as they create the same group names for obvious reasons. I've since deleted the Hue app and the duplicate names are gone so that mistake can't be made in the future.
I am also using Dimmer button controller for my lifx bulbs due to how simple it is to get my picos working. I have this turn off error like @robr as well. Anything easy I can do since I have many instances for dimmer button controller and hope to see no error in my log?
Again, it's not really a problem, just trying to send off() to nothing, but I understand the concern. I think you could fix it by modifying this snippet:
def turnOff(devices) {
logDebug "Running turnOff for $devices..."
devices.off()
}
to this:
def turnOff(devices) {
logDebug "Running turnOff for $devices..."
devices?.off()
}
I'll actually test this and release a small fix at some point.
I'd LOVE to use this app, but a huge need I have is to allow buttons to do more then just turn on lights on/off. In particular to set "modes" as I have modes (home, sleep, away, vacation) dictate a lot of actions and scenes as many scenes overlapp for my modes.
I could imagine controlling HSM (disarming alerts for example) could also be super useful!
Thanks for the consideration.
You can have more than one automation associated with a device or even the same event on the same device. Why not consider using this app for lights and HSM, RM/Button Controller, or (third-party but great) Advanced Button Controller for other things? You could also do everything in one of those, but I mostly wrote this because I was tired of selecting the exact same lights for every button on a single device.
