I have a Group containing two Lutron Dimmer devices:
I have created an Action in Rule Machine that dims the group:
This seems to have no effect. Turning the Group off/on as a switch does work, but nothing happens with the dim.
Should this work?
You're fading to Zero? Try fading to 1% instead.
Interestingly, fading to 0 seems to work (slightly better) than it did before. I think the problem is that the Group in question already thought it was off and was ignoring the fade. Is it a known problem that Groups can get out of sync with the physical state of the devices and ignore commands like this?
Well, it isn't a 2-way sync. It's a group. The intent of the app is that you would never control the individual devices, only the group. Like if you have a room with 5 recessed can lights all with smartbulbs in them. If you never wanted to control them individually but only as a group, you'd create a group for them. Otherwise, the group app isn't what you are looking for.
If the virtual device is off you can't turn the virtual device off again and get the commands to go out to the devices within the group. It's not set up to work like that.
I don't really need two-way sync, I just want to be able to control the devices as a group without regard to their current status. So, say, turn all the devices off, or all on, or set all the levels to 50%, regardless of what they currently are. I was under the impression that was the point of the Groups app, similar to how device groups work in the Alexa app.
It seems pretty limited if a Group only works if none of the devices are ever modified individually. I should be able to turn an individual light on or off and then be able to turn an entire Group off and have that work, shouldn't I?
That is not what the groups and scenes app was designed to do. As i already said:
The whole point of the group app is that a virtual device is created that then controls the other devices. If you placed the virtual device on a dashboard and it was off, how would you turn it off again? You can't., The only way to turn it off is to first turn it on. So, i guess you could control the devices individually and then go to turn it off with the group device, but you would first have to turn the virtual group controller on in order to turn it off again.
Hmm, I had six recessed zigbee lights in a group, but still controlled them individually (e.g. when watching a movie, turn off the cans over the TV). Worked fine in my application, but perhaps something is different here using the Lutron dimmer?
That has nothing to do with it.
@epj3, your scenario sounds like mine (with Lutron dimmers instead of Zigbee devices). I think the problem I had in my Rule is that certain actions (e.g., off) work regardless of what the group's current state is; i.e., it will forward the off command to the individual devices even if its own current state is off, and they turn off.
With the Rule above, however, even if the group's current state is on, executing the Action results in a Living Room Lights switch was set to off event, and the state goes to off, but the lights remain on. Were you able to use any Rules like the above with your group, or were you just doing on and off? Now that I see that certain commands are working as expected, I can probably just change my integration to do that -- I'd prefer the gradual fade, but can live with just turning immediately off.
Wait... You turn the group device off but the component devices stay on? That's not right.
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