Turning on Hue lights

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1

I am thinking through my possible Hubitat implementation as I look to migrate from HomeSeer.

I want to mix automation with manual control of lights, to get the benefits of both. So my ‘room on’ light logic would be something like: (not HE notation):

If automation is turning on the lights in a room for the first time in this mode then turn on a specific scene.
If automation is turning the lights on and it is not the first time in this mode then just turn on the room at the last settings used.
If the room is turned on manually then make Hubitat aware it has been set outside of Hubitat.

To achieve that I need the ability to turn on the lights in a room or zone without defining the settings for each light so that they come on at the previous values (colour and brightness) and the ability to set a virtual switch if any of the lights in a room or zone are turned on. Are these possible with Hubitat and how is that achieved?

Different question If alerts occur does an alert managed through HSM capture a scene before it changes it and then restores it afterwards or do I have to use RM to capture the current scene and restore that scene afterwards?

Steve

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Not something I have done myself in HE (have done this in Hue), but I believe the ability to "capture" device states at a point in time will be what you want, a feature (I believe) that was available from when I first joined the platform 4 years ago.... Not sure how easily available this may be in the Room Lighting App, but certainly something that can be achieved in something like Rule Machine.

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Many thanks for the quick feedback, yes I believe it can be done in Hue, HomeKit and HomeSeer.

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I meant it can be done inside HE

Admittedly I'm showing this with a blind, but I expect the same is true for lights as well.

EDIT: Ah, I re-read your post and this may not be exactly what you are asking about.... Let me check one or two more things to find how to do this across different rules.

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5

Perhaps I'll be a little more methodical and respond to each part individually, plus an alternative approach that may be useful.

I'll also preface my responses by saying while I expect much of what you are after is possible, I am not sure how easy it may be to setup and maintain, I don't believe you will get this functionality out of the box in the built-in apps, but I could be wrong.

Yes, this would certainly be possible, detecting that you have transitioned to a mode and the lights in a room have not been turned on yet in that mode can definitely be detected, though it may get a little complicated if they are already on.... You may want to consider that. And activating a scene is also possible, whether it be one defined completely within HE or in a platform like Hue, using a long-standing Community-developed App. Note, I expect the detection of this scenario and recording of the first press is likely something you will need to manually setup in a rule for each room.

I expect you will just need to issue the "on" command for each light, so can't see an issue with this. And the ability to detect when to apply this is covered by my comments above.

If you are talking about adjusting lights in something like the Philips Hue App or another automation system, like HA or Node-RED, for example, then you will need to make use of a Community-developed app to have the light status kept up-to-date on HE. If you have lights outside of the Hue eco-system, I am not sure what options you may have. If you are only referring to control via accessories like a button / switch or rules on the Hue bridge, then you may be better placed to move the automations into HE to centralize the logic.

In terms of an alternative approach, which may or may not work for you, I have scenes setup for each room in Hue and have these activated when motion / sensor based lighting rules turn the lights on, e.g. when someone enters a room. If I manually control the lights with a button / switch, this disables the motion lighting, still allowing other manual control like dimming, etc. Only when I turn the lights off with the switch will motion lighting resume. In one room I have a button that activates or disables motion lighting.

This probably doesn't suit everyone, and I don't have other people to consider most of the time, but it works for me.

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Tagging @bertabcd1234 , he may be able to answer this with a little more authority than me... :slight_smile: Both in terms of Hue and HE features.

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It seems to me like you can do this by just using the on() command on the bulb or group, which will turn them on to their last state (really the same as toggling the switch in the Hue app, for example). If you want them set to a specific state, you can use the setColor() or setColorTemperature() commands, or setLevel(), depending on what you want.

I don't see why you'd need a virtual switch to handle this, though if that's easier for however you're doing this, I suppose that would work. But Room Lighting or Groups and Scenes (the Groups part) can create an effectively virtual device for you with various options for how it shows the state of its "members," and that's probably easier than anything you could set up on your own (but, again, maybe I'm missing something you want). Alternatively, if you import a Hue group into Hubitat from your Bridge, that will also be on or off based on the states of the member bulbs (all on or any on, depending on the integration you use and whether it provides any options--I like the latter).

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