Ok so new house, every switch and dimmer is zwave. I think i am at the point in my hubitat journey were I am able to do everything I want to do, but now i am looking to tune for performance and to be generally efficient.
I have a house full of tiny humans that suck a turning lights off, and one of the things i love about a smart home is to be able to shut almost everything off when I got to Away mode and Sleep mode.
Seems to be several ways to do this. I am looking for advice for the best way. The logic isn't too complex "when mode becomes Away, turn off a long list of switches and dimmers". As well as, "when mode becomes sleep, turn off a similar list."
Seems to be a few things to consider here. First is the action itself of turning each device off. I believe i have these options:
- List each device individually in the rule.
- Create a "scene" which has each device in the off position, and trigger the scene.
- Create a "group" device, and turn the group device off.
I am looking for speed and processing efficiency, not for ease of managing the action. (i will manually add/remove devices to a bunch of rules instead of using groups if it works faster) Which way would be best?
The next debate is how to trigger the logic. Currently i am using Rule Machine like this:
Trigger: Mode changes
Conditional Action: If Mode is "Sleep" turn off a list of devices, if mode is "away" turn off a different list of devices, else end.
I heard on the podcast it mentioned to choose the engine that accommodates the complexity you need between Rule Machine, Simple Automation Rules, and Basic Rules and not more. So it would seem to me this could actually be 2 rules in Basic Rules. One for each that only fires when mode becomes Away and Sleep. Then the rule itself would fire less frequently. Is this accurate?
Curious to hear thoughts on speed and efficiency for the questions. How to best turn off a list of devices, and how to fire it for speed.
Thank you! Love this community.
I don't think there should be any significant differences between the three options you list for turning off devices (manually selecting in each rule, using a scene with all devices as off, or using a group device). However, if it were me, I'd say that using the group device is likely to lead to less effort in the future if the devices change or you use the same devices in multiple places (just modify the group, not the apps/rules). A scene would work too, but it's not very common to make scenes where all devices are "off," so it's just a bit odd (but not impossible).
With groups versus any of these other options, you also get a built-in "metering" option that lets you specify a number of milliseconds to wait between device commands, which you may find helpful if you have a lot of devices and they don't all respond reliably if you send a bunch of commands too quickly on your network. That's nothing you couldn't do with waits or delays between actions yourself in a rule, but it's likely a lot less work. If any or all of your devices are Zigbee, you'd also likely be able to utilize Zigbee group broadcasting, only available to groups, which lets multiple devices respond to a single command/broadcast on your network, likely making things faster and more reliable too.
As for what app to use, any of your options should be fine. You could do this with two Basic Rules, or you could really do it with two Rule Machine rules, too (each triggered by a specific mode, not mode changed, though that also would work with a conditional as you suggest). Simple Automation Rules would probably work, too. I don't see any reason to prefer one over the other if the app you want does what you want, though Rule Machine is likely to be the most flexible in the end if you want to customize this more in the future--but it wouldn't be hard to erase an SAR or Basic Rule instance and replace it with a Rule, either, if that's what it comes to. So, if you're comfortable with any of these apps, I wouldn't be afraid to use any (but generally RM is the most intimidating to start out with, so another option might be better if you're not familiar with it already).
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I tend to use scenes for this type of scenario. There are times when I want to achieve the same thing from more than one event. I live on my own and have things set up just for me, but when I have guests things operate differently, but when everyone goes to bed, I still want to shut the house down even though the triggers can be different.
