How To ?: Lighting & Shades

[anon2828]

Q1: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to programming lighting and shade automations in Composer HE vs. in the web When >> Then?

Q2: Is there any way to avoid lights turning on when you are doing a "Double Tap" on the switch action? (frustrating).

Q3: Is there a way to create a group of shades within either Composer HE or When >> Then?  (For example, I have 3 different shades in the Living Room and want all three to be in a group, or scene I suppose,  for purposes of both controlling via double taps to switches or presses to keypad buttons.)

Q4: What are best practices (ideas, tips, tricks) for the LED status/color of the dimmer switch itself or the keypad button LEDs?  I am sure it is personal preference, but I'm not even sure where to start.

[JSTRONG]

Q2. Yes if your using double tap programming you have to remove the connections binding. 

[South Africa C4 user]

Q1. Yes - AFAIK there is a lot more flexibility in HE (admittedly, I have not used When >> Then for some time.

Q2. As above, have your dealer remove connections and program on press, on release, single tap, double tap and triple tap to your hearts content.

Q3. Yes, but to do this properly, your dealer needs to add a blinds group driver.  If you don’t mind blind pop corn, you can program a macro that does one, waits 250ms, does the next blind wait 250ms etc.

[Matt Lowe]

q1 HE has far more options and customization , When/then is simple if this then that programming

q2 several ways, i typically suggest adding another button to use for programming like that and leave light buttons to lights.

q3 depending on the shades there are various ways to go about this and as said the proper ways will help to reduce the shades from  being out of sync

q4 keep it simple. I use the primary colors green red blue black, and white very rarely. Typically blue indicates on or off being top or bottom of the device. Green, red, black, and blue i typically interchange with media status. I like to tie it to the service. like red for dish network, green for spotify or deezer for me. Blue for pandora.

[anon2828]

Good stuff - appreciate the assistance and feedback.

RE: Q1: I have decent experience on both Composer HE and When >>Then.   I was really wondering for example, if I do the Double Tap dimmer button in HE versus doing it in When >> Then, is there ultimately any real difference in the result (I don't think so) or the underlying programmatics in C4? 

I have noticed that anything I program in Composer HE shows as being "Locked" with the little lock icon in When >> Then and does not allow me to Edit over in When >> Then as it thinks it is Dealer based programming.  Little frustrating.  Was thinking about moving everything over to When >> Then because I am a Mac user and doing Composer HE on Parallels stinks and I can access When >> Then even on my mobile device for quick fine tuning.

RE: Q2:  If the C4 Dimmer Switch in question is TIED TO THE LOAD, how do you still avoid the light coming on with a Double Tap?  Maybe I am not understanding the terminology between "tied to the load" vs. a connection (are we talking about the same thing)?  And if this is removed, how do you control the load connected to the C4 Dimmer Switch.

Really appreciate the input!!

[South Africa C4 user]

Q4. Also green for on and red for off on some device types (e.g. I use this for alarm, electric fence etc.). I happen to use pink for music (no idea why - I blame my dealer here). I use light blue for big groups of lights (e.g. all of downstairs, all of upstairs, whole house) and have used this to denote one way control (I.e. off but not on) whereas I use dark blue for normal lights and small groups (all with 2 way control).  For irrigation, I use green and red to tell me if it is scheduled or not and blue to tell me it is running.  Single button click turns the scheduling on and off. Double click starts /stops a cycle.

[rea]

39 minutes ago, anon2828 said:

Good stuff - appreciate the assistance and feedback.

RE: Q1: I have decent experience on both Composer HE and When >>Then.   I was really wondering for example, if I do the Double Tap dimmer button in HE versus doing it in When >> Then, is there ultimately any real difference in the result (I don't think so) or the underlying programmatics in C4? 

I have noticed that anything I program in Composer HE shows as being "Locked" with the little lock icon in When >> Then and does not allow me to Edit over in When >> Then as it thinks it is Dealer based programming.  Little frustrating.  Was thinking about moving everything over to When >> Then because I am a Mac user and doing Composer HE on Parallels stinks and I can access When >> Then even on my mobile device for quick fine tuning.

RE: Q2:  If the C4 Dimmer Switch in question is TIED TO THE LOAD, how do you still avoid the light coming on with a Double Tap?  Maybe I am not understanding the terminology between "tied to the load" vs. a connection (are we talking about the same thing)?  And if this is removed, how do you control the load connected to the C4 Dimmer Switch.

Really appreciate the input!!

There is no real difference in the underlying programming between Composer HE  and When>>Then, just that Composer allows you to do much, much more with your system. Also, when you're in Composer HE, you can right-click on your programming and click "change to customer." This will allow you to edit in When>>Then (won't work for more complex programming). 

As far as the light bindings/connections, that's done at the dealer level so you can't remove that in HE or When>>Then. Once a dealer removes the bindings, then you can setup that light to come on with a single tap instead of a press so that your double taps won't trigger them--note, you'll now have a slight delay in the light coming on when you tap it once after this. 

Surprised you're having issues with HE on Parallels--it's always seemed to work really well for me. 

[anon2828]

Stumped:  I have a C4 Dimmer Switch hidden in a closet that is for the Dining Room Lights (controls that load directly - wired to it).   In the actual Dining Room is a C4 6-Button Keypad.  I would like to allow one of the Keypad buttons to control the Dining Room Lights - such that one press turns load on, another press toggles load off (think I can do the foregoing in Composer HE Programming), but then also like a button connected directly to a load allow for pressing and holding the button to dim up and down.  Would also like then to allow for a double tap to open Dining Room shade and a triple tap to close Dining Room shade (unless there is a better way).  Can this be done in Composer HE??

Or do I need to do all of this through a Scene since I already have a C4 Dimmer Switch attached to the actual load for the Dining Room lights?

[Cyknight]

I can't help but think you're trying to do too much on a single button here.

The basics:

-You can program a button to simply toggle a the load. Clean and simple

-You can BIND a button to a load and it will do the above AND allow for press and hold dimming (must be done by dealer) It's not impossible to do it in programming, but it never works nearly as smoothly

-You can program towards single tap, double tap and triple tap for diffente functions, that;s fine HOWEVER:

-1 IF you BIND a light to a button with multi-tap programming, that binding takes priority and will always happen

-2 If you are doing double/triple tap porgramming you should use the single tap for the 'main' programming, NOT the 'pressed' programming because 'pressed' triggers every time, similar to the above.

 

 

One other thing to note about when-then is that it REQUIRES 4Sight to function, HE programming does not.

[anon2828]

Cyknight - excellent summary. Thanks!!

[LollerAgent]

It's also worth noting that bindings are always much quicker (more responsive) than programming.  So - if you don't need double/triple tap, it's always best to just ask your dealer to bind.  I wish programming was as quick as binding, but it's not

[EverAction]

If I can throw in my two cents... Avoid having any lighting functions tied to a button that involves, double taps and triple taps. Whenever you add double/triple tap programming to a button, you're inheriently adding a delay to the response of that button as C4 is waiting for a potential second or third tap to read as a different command. This could produce delayed results that often get mis-identifed as a larger issue with the system (Zigbee reception) when simply as @Cyknight said -- you're trying to do too much with one button.