I’m writing to see if anyone has been able to get the functionality I’m looking for with the existing Insteon PLM code, and/or to request if someone more savvy than I, could help to add it.
I’m basically looking to replicate the GroupBroadcastOnOff feature for use with dimmers as well. I have several instances where either multiple dimmer switches, or multiple lamplinc dimmers are part of the same scene. When operated using the Insteon switch, all devices in the scene are activated instantly. To get all of the devices in the scene to respond to OpenHAB input, I have created rules to update the various devices in series, 1 by 1. While this works, it can be problematic for scenes that have 3 or more dimmers. Multiple changes to the dimmer slider, in OpenHAB, results in a bottleneck of commands being sent to the various devices such that it can take 20-30 seconds for all of the devices to update successfully.
So, since the GroupBroadcastOnOff feature seems to solve this issue for switches, I’m hoping it can be adapted for dimmers as well.
Should work out of the box for any device in that insteon scene. OpenHAB will send the group command on the insteon network via PLM. All devices set up to respond to it, should respond. Not sure what exactly you are asking.
The existing binding supports group broadcasts for on/off devices, but not dimmers. I’d like to have the same kind of control over scenes that are full of dimmers rather than on/off devices.
I’m not sure that’s true. I have it control dimmers. Like I mentioned before all it does is send a group broadcast. ANY device set up to respond to that group broadcast will respond.
So for example if switch a is set to turn off and dimmer b is set to go to 45% when it receives a group 0x0f (or whatever) on, both should respond that way when OpenHAB sends that command via the PLM.
That is true, and I do have some dimmers that respond to scenes in that way. However if I want to assign an OpenHAB slider switch to a group of dimmers and have them all respond in the same way at the same time, the only way I have found to do so, is to add one of the dimmers to the sitemap, then create a rule that updates the rest of the Insteon items (dimmers) to match the value of that one dimmer.
Ah, ok, now I understand what you are looking for. Unfortunately this is not how insteon scenes work. I don’t believe this functionality exists in insteon, so it’s not something that OpenHAB can do.
It wasn’t until your last reply, that I opened up the Insteon iOS app, and saw that for those scenes, there is no slider, but instead an up and down arrow which seems to control the brightness of all of the switches in the scene.
I’m assuming this means that the physical switches operate in unison by sending a broadcast command to either ramp up or ramp down the dimmer when the dimmer switch is pressed. Then another broadcast command when the button is released to tell all of the dimmers to stop. Is that more or less how it works?
In OpenHAB, would it be possible to replicate the functionality of the Insteon iOS app, so that I could have an up and down arrow for these dimmer scenes? If that would be possible, then I’m also wondering if it would be more desirable to create a rule that would send X amount of broadcasts based on the position of the slider in OpenHAB.
