Simple access to scenes.

I have quite a number of cross-linked virtual circuits, and would like to have a simple way to turn the entire scene on/off from a single button in Indigo Touch, manually from the device browser, etc. Basically, I want to keep all the buttons on the various controllers in sync when I turn on the load.

I recently upgraded from SmartLinc, in which this was easy to do. (Well, all it really has are scenes.)

Using actions, I can turn a scene on with an action, and turn it off with another action. There appear to be other more complex ways to mimic the correct behavior. But is there a direct way to have single on/off/dim control for the entire scene?

As a feature suggestion, it would be really nice to have virtual circuits be treated almost like a single device.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[matt (support)]

We'll soon be releasing Indigo 5.0.3 which will allow plugins to create relay class devices. It will then be possible for us (or someone else) to develop a very simple plugin that lets users create virtual devices that execute ON and OFF INSTEON scenes. Because these will be based on the native Indigo relay type, they will then be accessible from Indigo Touch as devices (which is unlike custom plugin devices).

Press and hold to dim/brighten scenes, however, won't be able to work with this technique because Indigo doesn't currently support doing real time scene dimming and brightening (just individual devices). It might some day, but it is timing sensitive so will require additional work.

Note in the mean time you can create your own Control Pages where you have buttons to execute the ON and OFF scenes, however I guess that won't show the virtual scene ON/OFF state.

Thanks.

I will look forward to 5.0.3.

We'll soon be releasing Indigo 5.0.3 which will allow plugins to create relay class devices. It will then be possible for us (or someone else) to develop a very simple plugin that lets users create virtual devices that execute ON and OFF INSTEON scenes.

Can't we sort of do that today by creating an X10 relay device (using an un-used house/device code combination.) and then having a trigger, based on the state of that device, execute the scene?

[matt (support)]

Yep, that should work. But it will have a bit of a delay since the bogus X10 command will have to be put on the power line first.

I'll still wait for 5.0.3

BTW, It sounds like a nice little plugin would be a hybrid Device/Action plugin. In which a device could be defined and linked directly to an action (or an ON and an OFF action). It wouldn't really add functionality, but the mental link of Device --> Action might be easier for some folks to follow than Device --> Trigger/Action.

EDIT: Or... Device --> Execute scene (no action)

[jay (support)]

I was thinking of the latter when thinking about building a plugin that presents a "generic" device. Define the device and allow the user to specify the action group that executes when the device is turned ON and another when the device is turned OFF.

is there a filter for group/scenes? I tried indigo.scenes and indigo.groups, indigo.insteon.scenes, no joy.

[jay (support)]

You mean to filter the Action Group list? If so, then no. Not sure it would be terribly useful...

If I want to present a menu list of available Group/Scenes, so I could execute one with indigo.insteon.sendSceneOn(11).

Just like <List class="indigo.actionGroups"/> but for Groups/Scenes.

[jay (support)]

Ah. No, that wouldn't really be terribly useful since the "name" of a PowerLinc group is completely optional so it wouldn't be a good way to identify which groups are defined and which aren't.

Well, then how about by number? If there is no built-in filter, is there something to iterate over?

for scene in indigo.insteon.???.iter():

list += scene

[jay (support)]

The problem is that Indigo doesn't really track which PowerLinc scenes have been defined - you'll notice that in the Execute INSTEON Scene action we don't filter the scene # popup - it shows all 250 possible scenes because we don't really keep a separate list of scenes that have been defined.

So, while Indigo can look up based on the number what links we've read/created in the PowerLinc, it's not a list really. It could be I suppose, but I don't think it's worth the effort.

Thanks, got it. I can just popup a list with options 0-250. BTW, why not 255

[jay (support)]

Ask Smarthome - I believe that's the # of PowerLinc groups they allow (but I could be wrong)...