Everything In webCoRE - Good Idea?

#21

What’s this?

#22

raspberry pi

#23

I guess the reason I can’t do to that direction is the complexity of my house and our life style.
Meaning, we don’t have any routines or fixed schedules.
I know a guy who wakes up 6.00am every morning except Saturday and Sunday and he want the lights on, music playing etc weekdays at 5.50am. He uses ST app scenes and it works well for him…
But my house had to be sort of “intuitive” which means tons of IFs ORs and Variables.

So for now webcore is the only option.

#24

it doesn’t have to be simulated switches necceraly BUT you must have “a trigger”
Than can be a simulated switch, momentary button, variable, time, sensor etc

#25

I get that, but the actual connection to the scene must be done in ST, right? From what I’ve read and experimented with, there is still no way for WC to access a scene. Or did I miss something?

In the above post, you sound like you’re referring to routines and not scenes. Nobody is incredibly schedule oriented here or in the other house either, including me. What I was getting at was different. Scenes are a particular way of setting a bunch of lights or plugs with one press, click, etc. and it’s performed quickly. WC doesn’t seem to have an equivalent, or a direct way to access scenes. I’ve played around with running actions asynchronously without much luck so far.

#26

I really have no idea about that. As soon as I realized that ST app or other automation apps were not usefull for my needs, I switched to webcore the same day and never looked back.

But let me just do a little test…BRB

#27

Yes doesn’t look like it…

Same type of scenes but more complex can be used like this in Webcore (just to give you an example)

Entrance
Entrance.png1178×2389 440 KB

#28

There isn’t a native command to execute a scene, complete with an editor to help you build the command and select the scene. However you can execute a scene by a POST request to the SmartThings API if you really want to.

#29

Does a WC “scene” like that set the level for all the bulbs asynchronously the way a ST scene does? That’s the problem I keep running into with WC. “With bulb1, bulb2, bulb3, bulb4, bulb5…” takes about 15 or 20 seconds to execute, which is insanely obvious, especially when turning on/off, and changing colors or to lower temperatures. With ST scenes, it’s only 1 or 2 seconds and looks natural to people in the house.

#30

Thank you for the suggestion. I will look into sending a POST request, since the last time I did one was with web dev like 12 years ago.

#31

BTW, I’ve also tried defining a device variable, but it seems “With {lights}” seems to have the same sequential issue. The only way I’ve found to get around it so far was using a virtual switch with local bulbs, and a Lifx GoG switch with Lifx bulbs. The Lifx group doesn’t seem to update the ST bulb status of individual bulbs for about 2 minutes after though, which is another problem.

#32

This is not normal. All five bulbs should react within the span of one second… or perhaps two seconds on a bad day. Something is definitely going on at your house. 15-20 seconds is not acceptable for reaction times. (I would not even accept three seconds)

Of course, the obvious exception is if I am downloading, streaming HD, online gaming etc. at the time. Then I would expect webCoRE to not be as “snappy”, since another intensive app is hogging my local bandwidth…

If you have a decent router, you may be able to prioritize traffic to your ST hub.
(Also known as QoS or Quality of Service)

I am going to go a step farther now.

If you are getting a 15-20 second delay when you are not downloading, streaming HD, online gaming etc., then my next guess would be you have runaway loops (or sloppy logic/code) in some of your pistons or home automations…

#33

Yes color change can be slowER then just turn ON or OFF but I’m with @WCmore on that one.
Even 10 seconds is too much.
My bathroom has 16 light bulbs all RBG and full color change is done in about 4-5 seconds and we intentionally slowed down the piston a bit because of 16 bulbs.

I never thought a sloppy codes could cause that, but when he took over my house to re-write stuff my efficency went up to 95%.

Even once, my hub was disconnecting for no reason. We figure out that it was a bad DTH.

#34

I’ll check for any runaway loops, but it sure seems like the non-local Lifx bulbs are doing all the holding up. There are 4 of them in a Lifx Group of Groups (GoG).

The GoG itself runs asynchronously for all 4, but the on/off status of those bulbs doesn’t update to ST for quite some time, which can be up to a minute or longer. Status changes are reflected instantly in the Lifx app, but color/level changes made at the group level sometimes never reflect as such at the individual bulbs in the ST app. I’m seriously thinking of ditching the GoG (and just using the bulbs or a virtual switch/dimmer) if I can’t get it working smoothly soon.

One major issue is a circadian brightness & color temp script I’m running. It’s supposed to run through any bulbs turned on and change their level and temp according to global vars set by my location mode piston. When 7 or 8 bulbs get turned on at once however, some of them get skipped and don’t change at all.

Logging has said “Waited at a semaphore for 10s+” a bunch of times. As a WC newbie, I have no idea if that’s related to the delays I’m experiencing or not.

Another thing that happens is 1 or 2 lights will come back on after being turned off. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason, and I’m not sure if that’s related as well.

I may have to work with someone individually if possible. There are so many things going wrong concurrently that I’ll probably wind up driving the forum crazy before anything actually gets resolved. :grimacing:

#35

then @Wcmore is your man.:slight_smile: He does this for a living.

#36

This sounds to me like Lifx is the “master” of your bulbs, not SmartThings.

Generally speaking, each device can only have one master. I always try to make sure SmartThings is in charge so I get the quickest response times. If you keep Lifx in charge, then SmartThings won’t know anything until Lifx passes along the information.

#37

How to? I followed the Lifx Group of Groups instructions for the IDE to get it working, and didn’t see any mention of one direction or another, or delays in bulb status updates.