I have searched for a mechanism to enhance SAF by making my scenes "smarter" but I do not think the existing functionality makes this possible. The chief complaint I receive from my wife is that "hey why did the lights just go off? I turned that one on and it shut off a few seconds later!" My reply is "well that's how the scene works — when I pushed that button…" What I need is the ability built into scenes to ignore certain actions if a dimmer/bulb/switch already is on/off to prevent this from occurring.
I tried to duplicate what a scene does from within RM but that quickly got unwieldy. It also is limited — only two dimmer levels can be effectively set from an RM "scene" without calling a real one. I use scenes extensively as we have lots of lights in our home! So this is very important to get right!
This is a list of the smarts I would like to see added:
If already on, do not turn off
If already off, do not turn on
If already on, do not change intensity
These three conditions should be settable per dimmer/bulb/switch/etc. I also see value in it being settable for all dimmer/bulb/switch/etc in a scene. For example, if you have a scene with the "already on, do not turn off" setting checked, then the scene is switched on, if the bathroom light already is on, it won't turn off, if the bedroom table lamp is on, it won't turn off, etc, but neither of these dimmers on state would not effect each other nor any other device in the scene.
I hope this is helpful and others find this useful!
I've read your posts a few times and am having a hard time understanding why you would want this behavior. Scenes are designed to do about everything you don't want (turn on or off specific lights and set to specific settings--level, color, etc.). I can't think of a use case for the near opposite, so I might just be missing something. Is there an existing product or real-world non-smart situation that does something similar that would help me understand? (I'm also thinking of Hue scenes, who do something quite similar to Hubitat.)
It almost sounds like you might be creating scenes that include all (or most) of the devices in your house. I'd guess most people create scenes separated by room. That way, your button device or other method of activating the scene will only affect the lights in that same room--generally what people want when they touch a switch/button for that room.
Some of what you want you can do without scenes at all. For example, the Button Controller app is capable of turning a switch (or bulb/dimmer) on without changing its level (using a button push or hold as a "trigger"), and if it's already on, there will be no effect. If there are lights you don't want affected by a specific scene, the other two scenarios sound like they could be handled by just not including them in that scene--then they'll stay on if already on or off if already off. To get them on if they're off, I guess you'd just need a different scene that also turns them on (and vice versa for off). You might also consider non-scene options, like a button device (assuming they're all on circuits and a regular switch/dimmer just for these won't work) that controls that light (or lights), again doable with a button app (or RM). Toggling the switch state regardless of the current state is another thing these apps can do.
Lights that need these behaviors shouldn't be included in the scene in the first place. I mean, if a scene says that a certain light should be off, but you set a flag that said "don't turn this light off if it's on", then the scene would effectively not have any control over that light.
HomeKit has a similar behavior in its scenes; you can specify that a light should simply be on or off, in which case the scene won't manage its other settings, or you can specify that it have specific settings (color temp and level) when turned on.
