I’ve read through dozens of forum pages looking for anyone else like me who used Webcore and Smartthings IDE to create rules for my dimmer switches so that double tapping up makes them go to 100% and double tapping down makes them go to 10%. I am willing to pay for the premium $30/yr to get this feature back. My lights all show up in the dashboard but I don’t understand what to do now. Do I need a rule, variable, or expression (or all three)? Do I need to connect Webcore with SharpTools via HTTP? Please include instructions that are detailed and easy to follow because I’m not a coder like many of you. Thanks in advance!
I don’t use GE dimmers, but I presume that since you had this going in webCore, I am presuming that the GE dimmers send scene commands. I do what you are asking about directly in ST with Routines and Inovelli dimmers, but you ought to be able to do the same thing using the Rule Engine with your GE dimmers. I don’t think you need premium for this, but I could be wrong.
Also, this is to double-tap the switch to get the desired effect. If you want this on the dashboard as well, add the rule as a thing once it is created.
If your switch doesn’t report scenes or double taps like in @Bry’s screenshot, there are two approaches I’ve seen used by the community.
The first is to use a virtual switch or variable to track if you’re within a double tap window. Then wait to see if a second tap comes in and respond accordingly. I suspect there’s some risk of timing issues here and it requires multiple rules as you have to manage the state of the virtual switch to manage the ‘double tap window’, but in theory it could be done on the free tier if you used a virtual switch.
The second approach is more targeted to the purpose and requires variables and expression which are available in the free tier. The idea would be to track the last time the switch was turned on by storing the time in a variable, then wait your double tap duration window. If you get another tap in that window, treat it like a double tap and clear the variable. Otherwise at the end of the window, run the normal single tap action (assuming the double tap variable hadn’t been cleared by a double-tap action).
If you want to share a screenshot of what you were doing in WebCoRE, it might also be possible to recreate a similar approach.
I tried to duplicate your Trigger but I don’t see options for “Button 1” or “Button 2”. My dimmer has at least 2 buttons, up and down, and I remember needing to select those in WebCore to get the double-tap up and double-tap down to actuate 100% or 10%.
Here was my working code from webcore. I think button 1 and button 2 are the key to getting this to work. I wonder why SharpTools doesn’t see both buttons.
Update, I got this rule working if I click on it in the dashboard. How to I make it work on the physical switch in my house now? The trick was selecting attribute “button” and then changes to “up_2x” or “down_2x”.
Can you share more details on the GE Device you’re using? Is it still using a Groovy DTH or has it been updated to an Edge Driver?
What other options show up under the ‘changes to’ other than ‘down_2x’? Another approach would be to either add all the different values as triggers or add two triggers one for ‘is’ and one for ‘is not’ of the same value that way the rule will be triggered when any event occurs. Then you could test different physical actuations on the device and then check the SharpTools logs to see which (if any) of those events are reported.
For a button that reports which numeric button value was pressed, normally you would grab that data from the Extra Event Data, but as devices are switching over to Edge Drivers I’ve seen less reporting of the button via event data and more commonly see devices switching over to ‘components’ for each button.
If you can confirm which DTH or which driver you are using, that might make it easier to identify what type of current behavior your device is using.
Note that when if you added the Rule as a tile to your dashboard that when you tap on the rule tile, it directly executes the Flow portion of the rule and completely bypasses the Triggers section.
Yes, my GE light switches are still using Groovy DTH. It has not been updated to Edge. The other options for what the button can change to are shown in the screenshot below. Thank you for helping me understand this better, I see now why it’s working when i press the tile in the dashboard (it doesn’t rely on the trigger).
I tried to create a Virtual Button like you recommended but couldn’t find instructions. I don’t fully understand what you meant by adding all the different values as triggers. I’m willing to try anything or pay anything to get this working. My wife really misses the double-tap feature.
I would consider updating to an Edge Driver. Otherwise what you end up coming up with for the Groovy driver might be short-lived as SmartThings is in the process of shutting down Groovy.
One of the challenges with Groovy DTHs, is they sometimes show all of the possible options for a capability even if the device doesn’t actually implement those options, so it’s a bit hard to say if those are actually valid options. That’s why I was suggesting the trick around setting up all the different trigger values (more on that below).
Just to reiterate this point, I’m not intimately familiar with WebCoRE, but I believe the example you showed uses the Extra Event Data I mentioned here. Doing the trigger test should help us better understand what’s happening when the device is single tapped or double-tapped so we can setup the rule accordingly (next section)
In the triggers section, I have a trigger for ‘button changes to pushed’ and another that is the inverse of that with ‘button changes and is not pushed’. That effectively captures all of the potential trigger scenarios of the button attribute.
The idea being that we can then try pushing a button and then review the Rule Logs to see what value triggered the rule when the button was either pressed once and when it was pressed twice. That will clue us in to the best way to configure the rule.
Major Update, I took your advice the best I could and watched a few videos including this one on how to completely delete webcore and Smartthings IDE custom device handlers and then re-add my device after joining ST Edge Beta. Now, my newly added lights have the driver tab and I can select between virtual or zwave but neither give me “buitton 1” and “button 2” on SharpTools Rules. I only get Switch and Level.
On Callaway.Smartthings.com, I have installed all the drivers that make the most sense to work with these dimmers, about 5 total. But only 2 are showing up on my phone ST app, Z-wave Switch and Z-wave Virtual Momentary Switch. When I select the Virtual Momentary Switch driver, my light stops working completely within Sharptools.
Bro, I’ve got tears of joy right now! Thank you for finding that driver. My wife is already in bed but when she wakes up it’s gonna be like Christmas morning for her. I owe you a case of beer!
