I apologize. I have read the Wiki and I have watched the tutorials. I still have some questions so I thought I would give a specific example and if anyone feels like responding, seeing what I am told might help me with much down the road.
Wink hub got bricked by Quirky. I have the ability now to fix it myself, but I was already frustrated with the hub so I went out and got a Hue bridge. All I have are Ge Link lights and Wemo switches so I just needed a hub that would work with the GE Lights and the Hue does.
I got it all setup. Everything works. I add the Hue plugin to VC. I pair with my bridge. I genXML. I look at the xml. Everything looks right.
Now, I got to make my (technically) first commands in VC. First up is turning lights on and off. I have 10 bulbs, and 9 of the are in 3 member groups. Game Room group (3 bulbs), Front Porch group (3 bulbs), Bedroom group (3) bulbs, and then a stand alone torch lamp.
I do the reading see that I need to do this (for the groups): Hue.Group {1} (id integer of group) "on": true or false
So first confusion (and long story which I won't tell). First time around I had groups. After setting up VC som reason my bridge stopped communication with all of my bulbs except the two lux bulbs. So next night reset bridge and start over. Everything working again. I setup 3 scenes (based on the groups I described). But how do I setup groups? I don't see a way in the Hue app. But I know I did it the night before. When I run genXML I comes back with x number lights, x number scenes, 0 groups. So I try to make my own groups in groups.xml. I use same ID number as corresponding scene, and friendly name 'Bedroom'. Now I make my commands:
The first night I did this it worked. Last night it didn't. When I said a group name, it did all the lights. No matter what group. So I believe I don't actually have real groups.
I'm going to be linking to the xml but essentially my goal was speak a friendly name for the group which would pass in the id value for {1} and then On Off would translate to true/false and go in as {2}. First night worked fine. Last night like I said, it did all lights. In the xml you will also see where I did a dimming command. Night before it worked, last night didn't try.
One of my questions is, when you have something like a list of lights like lht_br_1, lht_br_2, is it pretty much best to do a Map? Is it common to make lots of maps?
I want to do things the smartest, most simple way, and I am concerned ignorance is going to lead me down a path of accomplishing things, but overly complicated.
BTW - the groups.xml - that came from me and VoxCommando. Whereas, the night before when I set this all up, groups were there, I didn't create them. But then I googled and what I read said Hue doesn't have groups functionality yet, just lights and scenes so I am not sure how I did it in the first place.
When you have a Map table and you choose the option use both phrases and values, is the logic there the phrase will be the speech, and the value will be what is passed in if the speech matches?
Next, are the values getting passed in always chronological depending on their order in the construction of the command? So if I use a payloadXML for Value/Phrase for group names like Value 1 / Phrase Bedroom as long as that occurs on my command construction, will that always be {1}? And then the next thing I pass in, Value = True, Phrase = On, will that be {2} as it occurs after the first payload?
Last night I didn't have a lot of time, it was late, and I may have made mistake or something. But I want to include the xml so you can see exactly.
Sorry I know this is a very basic stuff, I guess I just need a 'yes you are doing it right' or 'no, you are not taking advantage of what we have setup here'.
I have more noobie questions but this is enough for now. BTW - you will see my commands for the two Wemo switches. They work fine. And for now I am not using Kinect. I am using VoxWav Pro. I'll have to work on the Kinect. It picks up too much noise.
I'm even rushing this question so I doubt I am getting out what my brain needs but it is worth the shot.
Thanks,
tobias.
