Switches and brightness channels - best practice for consistency

1

Hello all,

In my setup I have Wemo as well as Hue bulbs.

In Paper UI the Wemo bulbs have 2 channels - ‘switch’ and ‘brightness’ whereas the Hue bulbs only have ‘brightness’.

There are several threads discussing the differences in switches vs dimmers, but I’m confused as to why there are different channels available for different bindings for similar devices (I.e. light bulbs).

So the issue seems to be one of consistency.

For instance, the ‘Front Door 1’ bulb is a Hue with only a slider

On the other hand, a Wemo bulb, such as the ‘Patio 1’ bulb as shown below has the Switch set to ‘OFF’ but the slider still has a value.

The bulbs are all controlled via rules where I’m sending an ‘OFF’ command.

Would it be better to un-link the ‘switch’ channel from the Wemo’s and only use brightness? Is there a ‘best practice’ to ensure the various UI’s display the correct state of each bulb?

Thanks in advance

2

No, as the PaperUI ist not meant for day to day control. WeMo LED bulbs behave a little bit different than other LED Lights. You can just simply switch them off and they remember their brightness as shown with the slider. Using the switch again will set them back to the last brightness. In Your own Sitemap (Basic or Classic UI or even HabPanel), you can just define the Dimmer(Slider) for controlling the WeMo Lights.

3

Thank you @hmerk for the clarification and a super-quick response.

I now know why there are different channels. So in order to control my Wemo lights in the same way as the others, I can define a ‘switch’ which links to the brightness channel and not the ‘switch’ channel? :slight_smile:

4

Yes, the brightness channel will interpret an OFF command as brightness=0% and ON command as brightness=100%