@Dim Thank you for the input, but no dice - with the autoupdate set to false, i can see the commands come in for the items in the log, but the value doesn’t change anymore.
That would actually be ok, if there was a way to trigger a read for an item in a rule, but then i found the following post:
I hope that there will be a way soon to trigger a read from a binding for a specific item without touching the items file.