Switch Interaction I don't understand

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1

Hello all, brand new here, so bear with me.

I have set up my HE, with a number of smart plugs and some wall switches only at this time. They are all Zigbee devices.

My goal is to have two switches on my dashboard, one "Energy Saver" one "All lights OFF" The idea being I can kill all the lights in my home on one switch in the dashboard, and kill all plugs AND lights on another. I have assigned 2 scenes, one turning off all the lights(All Lights Off), one turning off all the plugs(Energy Saver). No problems there so far.

Where I'm having a issue is a interaction between the scene switches. I want the switch "All LIghts OFF" when turned off, to also turn off the switch "Energy Saver" so that it can easily be reactivated later with one press, rather than turning it off manually and back on to activate the scene again.

When I create a rule that says Switch "Lights Off" turns off -> Turn Off switch "Energy Saver" it is causing the plugs attached to the scene for "Energy Saver" to turn off. Since "Energy Saver" is a scene with all the plugs in their off state, this is contradictory to what should be happening.

I've attempted to create a rule in the rule machine with a delay, and I'm getting the same interaction after the delay when the rule goes active.

I'm sure it's something I'm not doing right, or perhaps there' s a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do. Any help appreciated.

To sum up

  • The "energy Saver" switch is attached to a scene controlling only smart plugs, they are captured in their OFF state

  • The "Lights Off" switch is attached to a scene containing only smart plugs with lights attached to them in their OFF state.

  • There are no duplicate devices between the 2 scenes

  • I have the following rules "When Switch ENERGY SAVER is turned on -> Turn on switch LIGHTS OFF" and "When switch LIGHTS OFF turns off -> Turn off switch ENERGY SAVER" <---That rule specifically causes my problem, but I can't figure out why.

Thanks for the help.

2

When I want a bunch of the same general type of devices to act as one (for example: all on or off) I use a group. That eliminates the interaction between scenes. I would only use scenes to preset different settings for several devices.

1 Like
3

That makes sense, I'll give it a try. Thanks!

4

I agree with @wayne.pirtle. Groups are great this application. I have multiple groups and I have groups within groups. I have all of my groups setup with “Use group device to indicate if any members are on” That way on the dashboard the group will indicate if any switch or light is on. I have higher level groups that only control other groups of groups. I attached a snip of one of my dashboards. This shows the three groups (Office, Studio and Master). The studio group is blue because lights are on in that group. The upstairs group only has entries for the three groups, it’s blue because the studio group is on. The links above are links to the dashboards for the individual rooms. I don’t use the groups often to turn things on but use them when shutting things off. When my “we’re sleeping rule” runs, it just needs to turn off the upstairs group and it turns off the Office, Studio and Master groups. I also use them to manually turn off rooms or floors from the dashboard.
Dashboard group snip

5

Thank you. I switched them to groups, and it eliminated the interaction I was having, I still have to play around a little bit, but it's better. Thanks for the hellp.