I have 4x of the “Ilumin Zwave Light Bulb RGBW”. I can control each one individually.
What is the correct way to set these up in OpenHAB so that I can control all 4 at once (by “control” I mean turn them on/off, dim, change color)? Doing some searches here in the forums and in the docs I see mentions of “association groups”, rules, and just “groups”. I understand that association groups are something the bulbs themselves support directly but according to some of the threads, it’s got it’s issues. So I’m guessing that the correct approach might be to use groups?
The problem is I can’t seem to find any clear instructions on how to actually do that. I setup OpenHAB according to the “New User Tutorial” https://www.openhab.org/docs/tutorial/.
Here’s an example .items file based on what I have done with my hue lights, hopefully this will make it more clear how it works:
Group:Switch:OR(ON, OFF) gLightsOnOff "Light Group On Off" <light>
Group:Dimmer:AVG gLightsDimmer "Lights Group Dimmer" <light>
Dimmer Light1 "Light1" <light> (gLightsOnOff, gLightsDimmer) {channel="hue:xxx:yyy:1:color"}
Dimmer Light2 "Light2" <light> (gLightsOnOff, gLightsDimmer) {channel="hue:xxx:yyy:9:color"}
The gLightsOnOff item will act as a switch that will turn both Light1 and Light2 on and off.
The gLightsDimmer item will act as a dimmer for both Light1 and Light2.
If the only thnig you want is that lamps do the same, you can set up a follow profile for three of the bulbs and they will simply do whatever is done to the fourth:
I’ve set this up and I am able to control the color and dimness of all three lights using HABPanel. The on/off it a bit weird. It turns off but it doesn’t turn back on, but I can turn them back up by using the dimmer.
Group:Switch:OR(ON, OFF) gLightsOnOff "Light Group On Off" <light>
Group:Color:AVG gLightsColor "Lights Group Color" <light>
Group:Dimmer:AVG gLightsDimmer "Lights Group Dimmer" <light>
Color Light1 "Left" <light> (gLightsOnOff, gLightsColor, gLightsDimmer) {channel="zwave:device:40068071:node7:color_color"}
Color Light2 "Center" <light> (gLightsOnOff, gLightsColor, gLightsDimmer) {channel="zwave:device:40068071:node11:color_color"}
Color Light3 "Right" <light> (gLightsOnOff, gLightsColor, gLightsDimmer) {channel="zwave:device:40068071:node12:color_color"}
Even though it works, I’m having trouble understanding why it works. How does the on/off and dimming work if I only have “Color” item and channel defined for each of my lights?
I’m starting to make some sense of https://www.openhab.org/docs/tutorial/sitemap.html, but my brain is actively refusing to process these concepts . Hopefully after messing around with some of these examples I can start to wrap my head around this.
The magic of the Item type.
A Dimmer type Item accepts ON/OFF commands, as well as numeric like 75%. Also the rarely seen INCREASE/DECREASE commands.
All these get passed to any linked bindings.
What the binding does with them is up to the binding, and will depend on the actual technology/device involved.
As the Dimmer type builds on the Switch type, so the Color type builds on the Dimmer type.
If you’re using HABpanel you won’t really be interested in sitemaps, which get used by other UIs.
. Hopefully after messing around with some of these examples I can start to wrap my head around this.