I am struggling with setting up my scenes and groups in a intuitive way. I've found this topic discussing the different between scenes and groups: viewtopic.php?t=14903.
What I'm looking for is the following:
Scenes are used for starting a certain setting of lights
Groups are used to toggle those lights on / off, like a switch
What I'm struggling with:
A scene doesn't trigger a group. So when you don't switch a group yourself, there's no way to turn off the lights after you've set a scene
A scene on itself can't be toggled, so you need a group or a second scene
When using a second scene, the state of the scenes seems to not match the real world. The ON / OFF state gets messy after a while, which is confusing on my dashboard (I know it doesn't matter apart from UI).
Scenes also seem to have a state "Mixed". What does that mean?
You can use one scene to switch on the lights, you can add as many devices as you want. Use the devices on command.
Make a second scene where you add the same devices and use the devices off command.
By the activation devices you can learn a wall switch or key fob to put on or off the devices.
I use a aeotec 4 button wall switch, button 1 for on, button two for off. The buttons 3 and 4 can be used for other scenes.
With two blockley scripts it is even possible two switch a group on and off with only button 1
I understand this. But scenes do not track state (on/off) the way that groups do, which makes my dashboard (dashticz) confusing to read. I also fail to see the added benefit of having scenes and groups the way it's implemented right now. You're practically forced to use one or the other if you don't want to make it too confusing for the people using it.
What I would find much more logical is to have it work like this:
[*]Scene sets lights to a specific setting, optionally also turning the lights on when they're off
[*]Group toggles a set of lights on and off regardless of their state. So groups do not control the dimming of lights, just whether they're on or off. When any of the lights in a group is ON, the group will toggle everything OFF. And when all are OFF, it will toggle everything to ON.
[*] Another optional behavior: have a scene toggle things ON/OFF provided that the lights current state are exactly how they were programmed in the scene (thus nothing changed in the meantime). Otherwise off course it should trigger the scene again.
I've not got it set-up in an "ok" way, but still find there's room for improvement.