Weird Issue with Buttons and RM

[mike]

New user. I am bringing my Buttons across from SmartThings.

I initially brought 1 button across, and it took while for the conditions in RM for the button capability to appear. Then it did. No idea what I did, for Button 1.

I brought another button across, and I cant find how to enable that button as a trigger/condition under RM.

is it necessary to first do something under the Button Controller App?

TLDR: I've got two rules in RM, one has the ability to select a button for a trigger/condition, but the second (newest) rule doesnt. What gives?

[Christopher]

Are you attempting to create a triggered rule or define a rule? Button pushes are used as triggers and, if I'm not mistaken, aren't able to be tested as a condition.

[mike]

What's the difference between a triggered rule and a defined rule(??) ?

[Christopher]

Triggers rely on an event to 'trigger' the rule while defining a rule gives it conditions to be evaluated.

Here is a link to Bruce's Intro to Rule Machine. He explains it better than anyone; it's his baby after all.

Rule Machine® Introduction

Rule Machine® is a generalized rule engine for Hubitat. It allows you to predicate actions to be taken by Hubitat by a logical rule based on specified conditions of your system. Rule Machine also provides Triggers, basic event-causes-action building blocks, and Triggered Rules where an event causes a rule evaluation. Rules, Triggers, Triggered Rules, and Actions work together to create sophisticated automations. What are rules? A rule is a method of specifying certain conditions and their tr…

[mike.maxwell]

You might want to have a look at our button controller app, it's able to do 90 percent of what I need to do with buttons.

[bravenel]

@mike

I've got two rules in RM, one has the ability to select a button for a trigger/condition, but the second (newest) rule doesnt. What gives?

A button has not state, only events. So it cannot be a "condition" (what condition is it in just sitting there?). So a button can only be a trigger event. Trigger events can be used with Triggers, and with Triggered Rules. As Mike says above, most button-press-cause-action things can be done with Button Controller. Button Controller has most of the actions available in Rule Machine.

A rule has conditions. This implies they have a state that can be tested. For example, a switch is either on or off -- that's its state. Now, these sorts of devices also have events: turning the switch on is an event, one that changes its state. What a rule does is examine the conditions (states) whenever there is an event for one of them. There would be no point in examining them at any other point in time, because they would just be what they were the last time -- until there is an event. Only an event would change their state. So, we just look at all of them for every event for any of them. This is where the rule part comes in: what is the logical relationship between the various conditions that we want to see? For example, light is on and day is Tuesday.

Consider that one for a moment: We want to find out when that is true, and then do something. So, first of all we want to check every time the light turns on or off if it's Tuesday or not. If the light turns on and it is Tuesday, then our rule would be true, and we'd do whatever it is we want to have happen. But, how about the case where the light is left on Monday night. At midnight it becomes Tuesday. So, we have to check then to see if the rule is true also. Each condition (is it Tuesday, and is the switch on) has an event that happens and all of those events are important for the truth of the rule. The Tuesday event happens at midnight Monday night (it becomes true) and at midnight Tuesday night (it becomes false). The switch event happens every time the switch is turned on or off.