I have five blinds that I want to open the AM, and close in the PM.
I am currently using two scenes and two Simple Automations Rules to do this:
Scenes:
Blinds all open
Blinds all closed
SAR:
Open all blinds AM
-- Calls Blinds all open scene
Close all blinds PM
-- Calls Blinds all close scene
I think (fading memory since I set this up) that I did it this way based on advice from someone/somewhere that separately turning on two scenes would be more reliable than using the on/off option on a single scene. Also, having both an Open or Close scene gives me flexibility to call either scene in other automations if I wanted to.
However, it seems like I should simplify things by using one SAR rule that turns on the Blinds all open scene in the AM and use the "Off time" option in that rule to reverse things in the evening. One rule, one scene, fewer moving parts, simpler.
I know this seems obvious, but wanted to confirm in case there are quirks/issues that I have forgotten about, or never knew.
If they ultimately all call the same commands on the device, I can't see this making a difference either way. Presumably, your second option would call the "Off" commands on all the device, so if that's what your "all close" scenes does anyway....then same thing.
The biggest thing I could see mattering either way is whether you have optimization in the scene enabled (sounds like it would help, but if your blinds don't report the correct state back, you'll want to make sure it's disabled--I normally disable it personally) and whether you're using the metering option (an easy advantage Scenes provides over just selecting all the devices in SAR directly, which you could also do; this will insert a small delay of your choice between commands to each device, which could avoid flooding your Z-Wave network and improve reliability).
If keeping them as two separate scenes makes them easier to activate (e.g., calling by voice on demand), then I'd probably keep doing that. But that's just me. (I instead prefer to struggle with just a Group and telling Alexa to "dim" to a specific level and hope she didn't hear "lights" instead, to great disaster, which almost always happens...)
Thanks, Robert. I do have optimization off (both on the scene and in the rule). I do have metering on, 100ms delay.
I don't use voice commands with the blind scenes, or very much with blinds at all, for the reason you note, that Google hears "lights" half the time and that just doesn't help with WAF very much.
I guess I'll let it ride as it is for now... Thanks.
(I instead prefer to struggle with just a Group and telling Alexa to "dim" to a specific level and hope she didn't hear "lights" instead, to great disaster, which almost always happens...)
