Grouping RGB Bulbs

[tpchristian]

I am trying to figure out the best way to group bulbs. These happen to be Tuya bulbs with local control setup. The end result that I am looking for is that I can control the multiple features of the bulbs (state, color, etc.) as one. Here is what I could think of, but none of them seem too good.

Linking

I saw that there was a feature for linking devices. However, when I went to the root device, there was no linking option. There was a linking option at the feature level. However, that would be a serious amount of linking to do -- quite laborious. I think that I would need to set up a virtual device with the same features and link all of the features from the 8 bulbs.

Events

This seems just as painful as the linking above. I would create a virtual device with all the same features. Actually, I am not even sure if I can create a virtual device with features. I'll have to figure that out. I would create an event on each feature to update all of the bulb's features when the device value changes. Not sure yet if I could do with standard actions or if I would need to create a script.

Anything else? Has anyone done something similar? On the Tuya app setting up a group is super easy and works great, but don't want to use the app.

[kenm]

Take a look at groups in EasyTrigger. You can apply changes to all devices in a group. It doesn't work well if all of the devices in a group aren't the same, but in your case, that's not an issue.

[tpchristian]

So, create a virtual device with the same features and then use that plugin to replicate the values from that to the other devices?

[Ltek]

So, create a virtual device with the same features and then use that plugin to replicate the values from that to the other devices?

Yup, its tedious. And ridiculous that HS doesnt have the ability to group like-devices and create a 'composite virtual device' that represents all of them.

Also... even with EasyTrigger there is no way to get a status from the device group. So I created a way to put those into a virtual device. I call it Composite Devices. You can quickly/easily change the script's constants to include or exclude what you want. It works well to see the status of multiple similar real devices.. like Door, Windows, etc.

get the script here...
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/de...in-one-vdevice

BTW... we will never get built-in feature like this since HS has no new features in over a decade and the core is still programming tech from the year 2000, literally.

[kenm]

So, create a virtual device with the same features and then use that plugin to replicate the values from that to the other devices?

Rather than creating a virtual device, just use one of the devices in the group to control the group values. I'm not in front of my computer right now, but I seem to recall the trigger is something like if any device in a group changes value.

[tpchristian]

I read through the doc for ET. It seems that the intent was to work on groups of devices and not groups of devices that each have multiple child devices/features. This looks to be a lot of work to sync all of the child devices. Am I thinking correctly?

[kenm]

That's because ET was created prior to HS going to the parent/child root/feature model. For me, I created two groups, one for the RGB feature and one for on/off/dim feature. Those are really the only two features I use for controlling those bulbs.

[tpchristian]

OK, got it. Thanks. Yeah, my bulbs have many features; mode (on/off), brightness level, color mode (white/color), and color. There are more, but I think those are the ones that I need in order to work with google home. Thanks for your advice. I've requested a feature. It sounds like it will be a bit painful to group as well as needed to, perhaps, buy a legacy plugin. I think I am going to start with just making all of these sync with GH. It can do some grouping with voice commands. When I get the events, I may have to break down and write a script.