I've been struggling with this, but I have to believe somebody has figured this out already...
In my closet, I have four hue bulbs(with a Hue Hub in a Hue Group) on a circuit controlled by a ZEN27 with the latest firmware. My goal is to have the ZEN27 act like it would if I wasn't using smart bulbs; that is, I want paddle-up to turn them on, paddle-down to turn them off, and -- the real struggle -- dim them up or down by holding the paddle.
I've gotten close, but I ended up with annoying quirks, such as... If I used then ZEN27 to bring the brightness to full and later dimmed the bulbs with a Hue dimmer remote, then the paddle-up hold wouldn't ramp up the brightness.
So, what's the secret to getting this "natural" result with the ZEN27 and smart bulbs, in conjunction with the Hue hub sometimes directly adjusting the bulbs?
It's not clear from your post how you have this set up currently, which might be good to know. But in general, I suggest disabling local control (and possibly Z-Wave control if you don't trust yourself) on the ZEN27 and then just using the button events to manipulate the Hue bulbs/Hue groups directly--i.e., don't use the Mirror/Mirror Me app to mirror the ZEN27's internal level (which I think it tracks in this mode, even if it doesn't physically dim--which with smart bulbs you definitely shouldn't). Just use the button events to do things, like turn on with button 1 pushed or off with button 2 pushed. Maybe this is already what you're doing.
For holding the paddle to dim, you won't be able to use Hubitat's built-in integration with Hue groups. For some reason, they didn't implement the startLevelChange() and stopLevelChange() commands on Hue groups. They did on individual bulbs, so that's one option, though if you have more than a few bulbs, it likely won't be as reliable. I wrote a community integration, CoCoHue, that does implement this on groups, and there is at least one other currently maintained community solution that I think also does. In any case, these commands are the key to smooth dimming with the paddle like you want: do startLevelChange('up') on button 1 held and stopLevelChange() on button 1 released, for example. Rule Machine and Button Controller call this "Start Raising/Lowering Dimmer Level" and "Stop Adjusting Dimmer Level" if that's what you're using.
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Well, that was certainly a game changer! I had noticed the lack of the startLevelChange() and stopLevelChange(), and that let had left me awfully confused about how I was going to accomplish this. CoCoHue was the (or an) answer. Thank you!
Here's my current config.
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