Using Deconz Groups - Hue Binding

Hi

I am in the process of migrating my lights from the Ikea gateway to decons.
So far so good. But now I have run into a problem.
I have a group of 11 GU10 spots I want to add as a single item in Openhab.
But i cannot find anywhere how to add a hue group to openhab.
I know I can add all the lights to openhab and create a group there. But I really want deconz to multicast the command so every light turns on at once an keep the zigbee traffic to a minimum.

I have looked at the hue binding source and have found code handling access to REST url /groups and even /scenes but not how I should add it to my .things file

Can anybody help me out?

I am running 2.5-snapshot btw.

1 Like

I am running 2.5.0.M2
Would also love to have support for deCONZ Groups.
Seems it us not supported in OH.
In Home Assistent this should work with deCONZ.
I am moving Osram Lightify and Ikea Tradfri away from their native gateways
OSRAM is not reliable and Tradfri I had to setup from scratch becouse a gateway died and there is no possibility for backup, not on Osram.
Till now I am impressed about deCONT (with RaspBee)

Dear all,

Unfortunately the Hue Binding does not support groups at the moment (see https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome/issues/2877). I tried to look into it more than once but for me it does not have priority and time is limited :neutral_face:. If we can find someone to volunteer for implementation (@m17design???) I will support him/her with all my knowledge about the Hue API and deCONZ API - which claims to emulate the Hue API with all its features.

Once the group feature will be available, adding support for multisource uminaries (see https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome/issues/4505) will be no big deal too.

1 Like

Yes time is always a problem.
I really hope we get groups support as it is really a must have if you have multiple lights in a room.
This really also applies to the other Zigbee light bindings (Ikea and Zigbee)

Until we get native support in the Hue (or Deconz) binding i have made a temporary solution talking directly to the API from a rule and dimmer

rule "Værksted brightness group dimmer get value"
when Item Vaerksted_Brightness received update
then
    Vaerksted_Brightness_Group.postUpdate(Vaerksted_Brightness.state)
end

rule "Værksted brightness group dimmer"
when Item Vaerksted_Brightness_Group received command
then
    val String MY_URL = 'http://192.168.2.1/api/5B31C73D70/groups/3/action'
    val Number bri = (receivedCommand as PercentType)  * 255 / 100
    val on = if(receivedCommand == 0) "false" else "true"
    var String myData = '{
        "on": ' + on + '
        "bri": ' + bri.toString + '
        }'

    sendHttpPutRequest(MY_URL, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", myData)
end

Just replace the IP, API key and group number with your own.

1 Like

Absolutely. Because - A quote from the Hue API documentation:

We can’t send commands to the lights too fast. If you stick to around 10 commands per second to the /lights resource as maximum you should be fine.

See also:

Unfortunately there is no real concept of groups in openhab that works at the binding level. The binding only knows about channels - it doesn’t know about items, or the groups that items are placed in.

I really think that OH needs such a concept as I’ve also been fighting with this for both the ZigBee and ZWave bindings. I have some ideas on how I could bodge something in the ZigBee binding, but really the binding needs to know the following -:

  • When a group is created - and some way to say it is a “physical” group linked to a binding
  • When an item is added, or removed from a group
  • When the group value is changed

This probably needs an extension to the API, and probably requires quite a bit of thought to implement.