I've just bought a Hubitat and am slowly moving lights to it from zigbee2mqtt.
(In case curious, zigbee2mqtt is great but a couple of times, after upgrading I would get duplicate messages. It was easy enough to work around but I'd rather not deal with this)
I have added a bulb, a momentary switch, and a motion sensor to Hubitat. This is my first try at Room Lighting -
'Limit Activation' indeed stops the light automatically turning on if there's motion and it's bright. However, this also seems to disable the light switch. I appreciate the room is bright and turning on a light would normally not be needed. However, it might well be that we'd like to turn on a light anyway.
You need to remove the button from RL activation. Use Button Controller (or Basic Button Controller) to manage the control of the light via the button.
Does changing the order of operations affect when the button is available? Moving the button before the motion sensor? I don't use RL as I went for Rule Machine as the logic used is exposed making it easier to comprehend.
A Button Controller and RL only for motion was actually what I tried first. I noticed that if the light was turned on because motion was detected, the switch (configured as a toggle) would need to be pressed twice to turn the light off. In other words, it seemed like turning the light on or off was not based on the state of the light, but instead a separate variable stored within each app.
Like the first press sent ON but since the light was already on nothing useful happened. When using more than one device to control a light there is a need to pass the current status along. If it is the same rule a local variable will do but if it is a different rule a hub variable is needed. RL may not provided such capability.
Hubitat does keep track of device state internally. So toggling should work no matter where the toggle comes from - BC or RL. If it's not working your bulb may not be reporting its status correctly. The only way to track the issue down is to enable logs for the apps and devices and then test out the actions.
To have a reasonably standard way of addressing lights (I'm using ZigBee groups anyway), I created a Hubitat Group for lights in each room. In the Devices page, there's a Status column that can contain the 'Status attribute'. This was empty by default for me. I set this to 'switch' and now my light switch works with RL, regardless of motion.
It's great that RL works. Having had a quick play with RM though, I'm quite keen on moving to it in the new year.
A reason I picked a Hubitat is that there is a community where beginner questions seem welcome. Many thanks indeed!
Guten Rutsch ('happy slide' into 2025; I'm in Germany),
Fred
