I've spent the last couple of weeks migrating (finally) from ST and for continuity took the approach of bringing all of my webCoRE pistons over and re-working them to control the HE devices. So far, so good, and most things are working pretty well. However, being an inveterate tinkerer and also wanting to join the mainstream, I'm probably going to slowly move all of those into RM and RL. I have lots of experience with RM from back in the pre-webCoRE days (@bravenel may remember me), so that part shouldn't be too much trouble. RL, I'm trying to wrap my brain around.
I have a use case I'm hoping somebody can assist with. We have a "TeeVee Lights" routine implemented in webCoRE and i'm wondering how to do it in RL. When we sit down to watch a movie, we turn on the TeeVee Lights virtual switch. It launches a webCoRE piston that turns off a bunch of lights and saves their state, then it turns on a couple of colored lamps at a low level and in a deep red color. When the switch is turned off, those lights are turned off, and all the lights whose state was saved earlier are restored.
How would you do this in RL? I'm assuming it has something to do with Device Capture, but the documentation on that is a bit thin and I'm not quite getting it.
Include all of the lights to be captured and turned off, as well as the lights to turn on, in the Devices to Activate. In the device table, set the Switch under Activation Settings to off for all of those you want to turn off, and set the color for those you want to turn on and the Switch value to on. With that you have your basic activation paradigm established: two on to a color, the rest off.
For Means to Activate, choose Switch Turns On and your TeeVee Lights switch. For Means to Turn off, choose Switch Turns Off and that same switch. In the Turn Off Lights Options, under Alternative Turning Off Methods, select "Restore the lights to the state they were in before Activation".
Thanks, @bravenel, that works a treat. I've set up a number of RL routines now and am also slowly getting rid of the virtual switches in favor of a similarly-named activator. Between Groups, Scenes, RL, and RM, there isn't much you can't do.
One enhancement request for RL. Allowing the use of variables to set color would be nice. I have a lamp fixture that has 5 bulbs (2 CT, 3 RGB) and when I turn it on I would like the RBG bulbs to track a hub variable called todaysColor. Doesn't seem like I can do that with RL right now. Unless I'm missing something, of course. Which is entirely possible.
Yeah, that's how you do it in RM, for sure. In RL, when I'm setting the Activation Settings for color bulbs, though, neither of those options are available. And if you try to use a global Variable for the hex value it seems to corrupt the rule after throwing a "NumberFormatException" error. Which, didn't surprise me, but I figured I'd give it a try. I'd like to be able to pull the Color value in Activation Settings from a variable.
