Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

Posted on
Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:32 am
bbruck offline
Posts: 343
Joined: Oct 05, 2008

Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

In my rec room, I have my desk and my TV. I have 4 Hue lights controlled by the Hue plugin, and 2 desk lights controlled by a switchlinc and a lamplinc. When I am working, I want all six lights to be on 100% and the Hue bulbs to be white. When I am watching TV, I want the Hue lights to be 20% and blue.

Using a RecRoom ON action group, I can turn turn on all lights to 100%; using RecRoom TV, I can recall a Hue scene that turns the lights on 20% blue; using RecRoom OFF, I can turn off all lights. In other words, I can do everything I want by going to Action Groups, and picking the right group.

I want to be able to include this functionality on my control page that has a number of toggle switches that display the status of a group of lights, and then toggle that group on and off. Sounds like it would be easy, but I haven't been able to do it.

With all my other toggle switches that just use Insteon lights, I use a Device Group; specify the lights, and then in the control page use a server action of Toggle. However, if I use a Device Group for this application and include my Hue lights, it will recall the last state of the Hue lights. Thus, if I had the lights on for work (white 100%), and toggle the RecRoom TV action group, the Hue lights come on white.

Alternatively, i tried creating a Virtual On/Off device. This way I can use a specified action group that forces the white v. blue, BUT I cannot toggle a Virtual On/Off group in the control page.

I hope I've explained this clearly. Is there any way to have a server action in a control page that will toggle these lights, for instance, by defining one action group for the ON action and another for the OFF action?

Any help is appreciated!

Posted on
Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:36 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

You can add toggling to a Virtual On/Off Device, you just have to specify an Action Group that does the toggling.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:46 pm
bbruck offline
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Joined: Oct 05, 2008

Re: Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

I saw that option Jay, but I guess I don't understand how to create an action group that would do the toggling.

Posted on
Thu Dec 28, 2017 5:18 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

Have you implemented status? That's required for toggling (otherwise you wouldn't know whether to turn the device on or off).

Once you've implemented status, then the action group can implement a simple script that looks at your status variable and performs the opposite (if status is on, then the script would turnOff the device).

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Dec 28, 2017 6:01 pm
bbruck offline
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Joined: Oct 05, 2008

Re: Toggle Ambiance Lighting (Hue)

Thanks. That's what I was afraid of. I am not a scripting person, I'm afraid; I was hoping this could be done without.

I seem to have found a horrible kludge:
Two action groups - one to turn on and one to turn off the lights
Variable ToggleLights on/off
Control page button connected to action group ToggleLights
ToggleLights toggles the variable
Two triggers that on a change of state of the variable execute the appropriate action group.

I was hoping that by having a 'command' action group that toggles the on/off status of the virtual on/off device, the ON or the OFF action group defined in the device would be executed.

Appreciate the quick response, though!

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