thanks for the reply, karl.
kw123 wrote:>> is there an easy way to send an "off"... --> no it will recall the scene, if you want to add an off scene you have to add that scene
Scenes are predefined RGB .. value, ramp rates .. for devices / groups on the bridge. No change can be done to a scene (from the plugin)
in the Hue app (IOS), i find that i can create a Hue scene and assign any brightness/color value I want to any lights that I want, except I can't set brightness to zero. Hue seemingly interprets setting brightness to zero as the same thing as saying "do not include this device in this scene". thus i don't see an obvious way of creating an "off" scene and selecting it as a substitute for turning a scene off. is there some other way of creating scenes besides the Hue app?
i do observe that the Hue app provides several different ways of grouping lights together besides scenes, including "rooms" and "zones"... creating these groups in the Hue app conveniently results in them automatically being created as Indigo devices by the plugin. thus, in general, it is possible (though arguably also a bit tedious) to take a scene, S and from it create a zone, Z, comprised of the same devices. when i want to turn the scene on, i can use the "Recall Hue Scene" action, with S. when i want to turn the scene off, can use just use the normal "Turn Off" action with Z. as a bonus, i can also use the brighten/dim actions (plus i can also program start/stop brighten/dim commands to work with certain press-and-hold type buttons). it is also possible to send a "turn on" command to a zone, but afaik, this will cause it to turn on to the previous state it had prior to the last time it was turned off - thus to have functionality that works for example like an Insteon scene, you need to have both the scene (for turning on to a remembered set of colors/brightnesses) and the zone (for turning off, brightening/dimming).