[ANSWERED]Virtual Device not working as expected

Necro-posting in hopes of a possible enhancement in a future update.

Talking strictly Z-Wave here but I suppose it doesn't need to be.

I think the issue here is that folks (myself included) read the word "group" and just interpreted it as a selection of devices to be absolutely addressed. In fact however, what's being done is a SCENE is being created. A scene being a collection of devices with particular parameters/settings for each.

So it's great to have this ability to create scenes with mixed settings/parameters, but IMO, we also need the ability to address an ad-hoc group of devices the same way we do a single one. Such that ON will turn every device in the group ON and OFF will turn them all OFF and toggle with toggle them all, etc. There 's no ambiguity this way.

I'm confident this is going to continue being a point of confusion because the groups don't actually behave like devices at all. IMO, this functionality should be renamed to "SCENE" rather than device group. Keep a Virtual-Device based device group behaving like a single device with predictable ON/OFF behavior instead.

Not sure if you'd put Scenes under virtual devices at all though - that's a little jargon-like. Might be best to have an entire "Scenes" category.

Without that enhancement, what's the current preferred way to set a group of devices to ON all at once so they can all be tied to a single trigger?

[jay (support)]

If you don't like the Device Group (which is probably the best solution using built-in tools), there are a variety of plugins that also create various types of virtual devices. One of those may be more to your liking.

Or, create an Action Group that turns on all devices you want (and another for off), then use the Action Group wherever you want to operate them all at the same time.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check out third party plugins, but I do hope my suggestion above is considered down the line.

The issue with an Action Group (for this purpose) is that it's too cumbersome to manage. There's no ability to make a list of devices that will get sent the command, so it means making a unique action for each light device - stringing together a macro in essence. The device group by comparison has the ability to quickly/easily select one or more items from the full list of devices. Easy to add, remove, edit - simple maintenance.