Hello. I’m just starting to use SharpTools, so please forgive simple questions from a newbie.
Is it possible to make up a tile which is an aggregation of many things? (a “synthetic” Thing). That is, with one press to turn on the lights in kitchen (composed of many Things).
I assume that the “state” of this “synthetic” Thing would be : on/off/some on.
Also, another question.
After making up my Dashboard on the web, can that same Dashboard be just “called”, in a portable browser on Android or IOS?
Jack,
Welcome to SharpTools and hope you have enjoyed it. You can create a virtual device in SmartThings/Hubitat, as the status aggregated device and use Rule Engine to update its status when other physical devices’ status changed. See the linked article below that I posted a rule example to aggregate the physical lights’ status into the virtual device.
In regarding to the the control, you can create rule to turn multi lights on or off, and add rule tile in the dashboard so you can press these tile to control all lights. You can use IF_Condition in this rule to check current lights’ status to determine if the action should be on or off based on your scenarios.
Yes, you can open and use the dashboard anywhere as long as the device has a modern browser. I have several dashboards, and some are created for mobile device specifically. On my Android phone, I opened the dashboard in Chrome, and then add that dashboard to home screen, so I can open it like opening an app from the home screen. And you can do the same thing on iOS device as well.
Thanks James.
Again, please forgive a number of newbie questions.
I have created a virtual switch in ST, can you please tell me where do I go to give SharpTools access to that virtual switch? (I’m sorry, but I don’t know where to go to update that list of permissions that I originally did).
Sure, not a problem at all!
You can manage the device authorization by going to the user page, Manage Connections, then select which hub you want to update. (SmartThings in your case.) Then you will need to login your SmartThings credential to SmartThings site and select the newly created virtual device to authorization list like how you did in the initial setup.
As James noted, the virtual switch is a great solution if you want to be able to control things and view the aggregate status. It’s a bit of work to setup, but a nice end result.
If you just want to be able to control multiple things simultaneously and seeing the status isn’t as important, then using a rule tile or routine is a great way to have multiple actions happen at once and is a bit easier to setup.
