I understand the confusion, especially if you’re thinking about ‘virtual items’.
You’d use the State of a virtual Item in a similar way to how you’d use a trigger Channel of a Velbus Thing
(Note the Title case usage there)
An Item and a trigger Channel are both something that can be used in the When section of a rule.
With the added bonus that Item States can also be queried during the Then section of a rule. (As you’ve done with your Sonos Volume)
For example
rule "example triggers and queries"
when
Item Virtual_Switch_Item changed
or
Channel 'velbus:VMBGP2:xxxxxxxx:XX:ch1' triggered LONG_PRESSED
then
Virtual_Switch_Item.sendCommand(OFF)
If ( Another_Item.state == ON ) {
New_Item.sendCommand(ON)
Another_Item.sendCommand(OFF)
}
else {
New_Item.sendCommand(OFF)
Something_Volume.sendCommand(0)
}
end
Or do you mean in the Experimental Rules Engine of PaperUI.
(The hint might be in the name)
That said, can you clarify what you mean by ‘Thermostats can’
Because the Velbus thermostat functionality is made up of Trigger Channels (that can’t be linked to Items) and normal (state based) channels that can be linked to Items and thus used in all the rules / logic solutions available to openHAB2.
I’m curious about the (Yet?) Regarding Velbus 