Incorrect light level on hue light group

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I have a group of Hue lights (Living Room) that show up as a group (see screenshot), and they are off (same screenshot), but the piston is reporting that the light level for this “light” (group) is “30.”

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2) What is the expected behavior?
I’m expecting the “light” (group) to return “0” when the whole group is off. Maybe this is a limitation of the Hue light group, but I wanted to see if maybe I’m not using the right variable to check the current level and for some reason it’s pulling something stale.

3) What is happening/not happening?
My light level check for 0% doesn’t match the reported value, which is also different from the actual value, so the piston continually tries to turn the lights off even though they already are.

4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston!

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5) Attach any logs (From ST IDE and by turning logging level to Full)
ae2e01e9-c48a-4bd5-9743-b0eb467a38f9 10:56:03 AM: debug ║ **** NL: Motion = active ae2e01e9-c48a-4bd5-9743-b0eb467a38f9 10:56:03 AM: debug ║ **** NL: Present = not present ae2e01e9-c48a-4bd5-9743-b0eb467a38f9 10:56:03 AM: debug ║ **** NL: Light Level = 30 ae2e01e9-c48a-4bd5-9743-b0eb467a38f9 10:56:03 AM: debug ║ **** NL: Lux = 12 ae2e01e9-c48a-4bd5-9743-b0eb467a38f9 10:56:03 AM: debug ║ **** NL: Triggered Nightlight piston

#2

Level can be a value other than 0 but the switch would be off. Here is one of my hue bulbs.

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#3

Ah! I did not know that. So I need to add the Hue lights as a “switch” in webCoRE to determine if it’s currently on or off?

#4

You don’t need to change the category they were added under.

Instead of checking levels just check the switch

#5

I think I was missing the “switch” option for my lights. I didn’t have them enabled under the webCoRE settings as switches, so I didn’t have the option to check if they were on or off… I’ve enabled that and will try using that instead of the light level.

#6

All my devices are added under the actuators or sensors category. The only time you need to search the other categories is if you can’t find it in those two categories.

Webcore doesn’t look at the category it was added under. The device type handler broadcasts to webcore what that particular device can do

#7

Good to know. Thanks for that info!

#8

Do you know if you attempt to set the “level” while the switch is “off” the level value will actually be stored (so if you turn it on later it goes to that stored level), or is the change to the level ignored while the switch is off?

It seemed to ignore my attempting to set the level to 0% while the switch was off, but I don’t know if that was something I was doing wrong in the piston or if that was expected.

#9

Not trying to threadjack but how did you get them to appear as a group?

#10

Using the custom smartapp by call “HUE B SMART” it exposes Groups and Scenes to Smartthings.

#11

I was hoping that wasn’t the answer lol. Can’t get it working. Even had dev on team viewer trying for hours (poor guy) to help get hue b Smart running.

#12

not sure if it’s the same, but actually using “Hue Advanced (Connect)” SmartApp

#13

I stand corrected, didn’t notice the cricadian feature.

#14

Set level almost always turns the light on. If you are wanting to set a level without turning a light on then you should just manipulate variables

Pretty sure you can’t set a level of 0. 1-99 maybe 100 is your acceptable range

#15

So I’m overkill by setting the level AND switching it on… I’ll play around with that. Thanks!