Just set it up. Works great. Quick question...

I have this set up with a bunch of Serena shades in my home. Is there a way to program a keypadlinc button to lower the blinds on holding down the scene key? Currently in Indigo the shades can't be selected if you chose the action "Start dim" which I would link to the keypadlinc button. I can pick the ability to "brighten" or "dim" (raise,lower), but not the dim/brighten by holding down the button action. Is there any way to do this?

Honestly, I don't know enough about Keypadlincs to answer that question. Is the keypadlinc supposed to behave differently if you hold vs press-and-release? Or am I not understanding what you're trying to do?

Can you walk me through the exact steps you're trying to use to do this? Are you setting up a trigger based on the Keypadlinc button presses received by Indigo?

I assume you're using the Keypadlinc to control multiple devices? Because if it's only for the shades, the Pico remote are cheaper than a Keypadlinc and can be programmed directly to the shade group.

It's actually for SwitchLincs as well. I already have the labeled KeypadLincs installed. They work fine for lowering fully up or fully down or to a certain set percentage.

https://i.imgur.com/QrigdY7.jpg

If you press and hold a Keypadlinc or Switchlink switch, you can dim or brighten a light from 0-100 if a light is attached.

I can pick any of my lights to do it with on any of the 8 buttons on my keypadlinc.

Since the setting for the shades is 0-100 I assumed it would work as well. All of the other settings work as far as "brightness" goes.

https://i.imgur.com/Tw5Y04P.png

I can do anything but start brighten or start dim.

OK, I see what you're trying to do.

I think those Start/Stop Dim/Brighten commands are Insteon specific. When I try that, only my two Insteon dimmers show up in the device list. None of my Lutron lights or shades.

I just looked, and the plugin API doesn't seem to have the commands needed to implement that functionality. Maybe Matt or Jay can give us a definitive answer on whether this is Insteon only or can possibly be implemented in a plugin.

Even if it's possible in a plugin, I'm not sure it's possible with Lutron. The Lutron integration protocol doesn't have any kind of "start dimming" or "stop dimming" command. All we can do there is command a device to a specific brightness level, with a specific fade time. And I'm not sure off-hand if the fade time works for shades. That would imply a variable speed motor.

I guess I should add that the way this would work with Pico remotes is that you press the down (dim) button once to start them in motion, then press it again to stop them. So the same command a second time stops the action. And the same to go up. But you can't do it with a button set to toggle, because a reversing command actually makes it start moving the other way.

But you want the hold to do something different than just a press, right? Single press does the assigned scene, and press-and-hold dims those devices? For the Lutron keypads, I enabled single, double, and triple presses each do something different. Not sure how that works with Insteon keypads.

Insteon can do double presses but not triple presses. At least easily as far as I’m aware.

I’m sure there is a way to do this with a bunch of scripting, just not easily it seems.

Thanks for the plugin though. Having the ability to control it like I am now makes them much more useful.

[jay (support)]

Part of the answer: Dimmer Extender Plugin

That plugin allows you to catch Start/Stop Brightening/Dimming Insteon messages from dimmable Insteon devices. So, if there were corresponding start/end brighten/dim actions for the target device(s) then you could pair them via triggers. It's one reason we added those actions for Insteon and Z-Wave devices in 7.3.

We haven't directly added those Insteon commands to Indigo because, in all honesty, we were concerned that a corresponding stop command might be missed due to signal issues with Insteon. While just brightening/dimming a bulb might not be a big deal, some people might use it for other purposes where it could be damaging if the stop message might be missed (think volume control where the volume starts increasing and just continues to go up until it blows out a speaker because the corresponding stop got lost due to signal issues with Insteon).

[jay (support)]

Oh, and just FYI, the HomeSeer 200 series switches do 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 tap events.

I went back and looked at the Lutron protocol docs, and it turns out there are commands to start/stop raising/lowering devices. So I'm working on a quick update that exposes these commands.

Issue tracking: https://github.com/FlyingDiver/Indigo-r ... /issues/30

See if this works in conjunction with the plugin Jay suggested.

https://github.com/FlyingDiver/Indigo-r ... /tag/7.2.4

Wow.

Amazing. I’ll give this a tryout tomorrow. Thanks so much.

Ok I've set it up and it works, but I think I may have run into a hardware limitation with the keypadlinc. If you hold a keypadlinc button for too long, it beeps and goes into what I assume is a pairing mode. Some of my shades are 12 feet tall, so they take up to a minute to raise or lower.

I can kind of get by it by starting and stopping the dim/brighten when they get near a spot that I want, but holding the button down and letting go would be ideal. Probably not possible though.

Thanks for working on this so quickly. I really appreciate it.

Does it work to fine tune the position after you start and stop it with a normal button press? I would think holding the button that long would be an issue.

Is there a way to use a keypadlinc as a "toggle" in Indigo instead of an on/off, where it goes through a predefined list of actions?
Something like:

Press 1: Start Lowering
Press 2: Stop
Press 3: Start Raising
Press 4: Stop

I think you need to take that question to the Insteon subforum.