Having some trouble figuring out scenes in room lighting. What I would like to do is as follows:
Step 1: Capture State of all Lights in the House
Step 2: Turn all the Lights in the House ON
Step 3: Wait for a Condition
Step 4: Return all lights in the house to the state they were in, when they were captured in Step 1.
I have done this with Rule Machine and the Groups and Scenes App. It was fairly straightforward and I use this automation when my smoke alarm is alarming. (ie. trigger=smoke alarm, next capture state of all lights, then turn on all lights, then wait for smoke alarm to turn off, they put lights back in their original state). Can't figure out how to do this with Room Lighting.
Import that Scene into Room Lights, and then edit the RM rule to use its RL activator device. You can't do all of this with Room Lights any more than you could with Scene-1.2. Or just leave it as is.
I can't figure out how to edit the RM rule to use its activator. It I select "Capture" in Rule Machine, what do I capture? If I capture the activation device that gets created, this does not work, when I try to turn this activator device back on at the end of the rule. Where is the Capture device (as opposed to activation device) in RL?
It works in Groups and Scenes App, but I am trying to figure out how to do this in Room Lighting. If this is not possible to create in Room Lighting but can only be imported from an existing group and scene, then I don't ever want to get rid of the app "Groups and Scenes". I don't think this is the case, as it was mentioned that if you can do it in Groups and Scenes you can do it in Room Lighting, I just can't figure out how? This rule does not work:
You need to capture the lights as you want RL to activate them, on the Re-Capture Devices page. Looks like you've done that already. When you first set up the Scene-1.2, you did the same thing, i.e., captured the settings you want.
Then the Testing Scenes switch is used in the rule when you want to turn them on. That's after the rule captures all of the lights -- assuming that is how you did it before.
The Last Line in my Rule Machine Rule above is "On:Testing Scenes", this is not putting the lights in their condition when captured, it is simply turning on all the lights. My question can be summarized another way: How in Room Lighting can you capture the condition of lights at a moment in time and then have them revert back to that condition at a later time. While being able to have those lights turn on/off between these two times based on various physical and/or digital changes.
Room Lights can capture the lights when it is activated, before it does whatever its supposed to do upon activation. Then when it is told to turn off, it will instead restore them to the way they were. That's an option on the Activation Options page.
It's impossible to help you if you don't show what you're doing. What does this rule do? I thought you had all of this working before with a Scene. Show a screenshot of the rule you had before. What were you using the Scene for? Which step of your 4 steps?
My existing rule with "Rule Machine 5.1 App" and the "Groups and Scenes 1.2 App" works fine. It involves several other items beyond just lighting, but everything works as it should, here it is:
Although there is a lot going on in this rule, you can see how the lighting part of it works. I would like to LEARN how to do something similar with the app called "Room Lighting" combined with the app called "Rule Machine 5.1". Call me crazy, but I won't experiment with an existing working rule until I have learned how to change it. Simply trying things at random have gotten me into trouble before. So my strategy is to make a simple test rule with all the extra stuff removed. This allows me to learn and experiment. Once I feel I have the basics figured out, I am then comfortable making changes to existing rules. The first screen shots in my earlier post shows that experiment. It is not working. That earlier post is a screen shot of the RM Rule and a screen shot of the Room Lighting instance. It does not work, after the rule has finished running the lights are not put back in their condition at the point of capture (first line in the rule).
In the existing rule (in this post) you see an "Activate Scenes", I can't figure out how to use this with Room Lighting since the dropdown menu that is displayed when you select "activate scenes" contains no room lighting instances.
In that rule it appears you are using the Scene in the ELSE part where it is activated. So all you'd do is change that one action to turn on the RL Activator device (which is the equivalent of activating a scene, in fact that's what activating a scene does). Everything else would be the same.
Activate Scene = Turn On Activator Device
You could even do that with the old Scene.
Just clone the rule, pause the existing one, mess with the clone...
Cloned the rule and it does not work, when substituting the Room Lighting that was automatically created from the Groups and Scenes App. It has the same problem as my simpler rule posted above. Here is my cloned rule with the only thing changed is the Room Lighting reference as opposed to the Groups and Scenes reference:
The problem being in the "Else" part of the rule where it says "On: Smoke/CO Alarm Scene Activator", this is NOT:
Turn on Activator Device = Activate Scene
but is rather:
Turn on Activator Device = Turn on all the lights listed in the Room Lighting instance
This was not done automatically when Room Lighting imported the rule from the Groups and Scenes app. Since, I am new to Room Lighting this wasn't immediately obvious that I would need to do this.
Sorry for the trouble, thanks for the Great Work Bruce.
How you would do this without creating a "Capture Device" is beyond me. I have tried a variety of things, if anyone can post a RM rule and a Room Lighting Instance where this takes place without the creation of a Capture Device it would be appreciated. I don't doubt this is possible, I simply have yet to learn the intricacies of the Room Lighting App.
There is an entire page "Set Up Lighting Schedules and Re-Capture Devices", where each time period of mode's device settings can be captured by pressing a button in the UI.
