A search shows a few people requesting this in 2008-9. I think it bears repeating.

In setting up scenes for a given room, one often needs to set different combinations of brightness settings for the same set of lights in the room. I have one room with 9 different dimmers for which I want to set several different combinations of dim levels (scenes). Each scene is to be activated by: 1) a keypad link button; 2) by a remoteLink button; 3) programmatically by activating a PowerLinc scene.

It is wonderful to be able to use Indigo to do this; but it it is still rather cumbersome, time-consuming, and error-prone. Right now one must individually add each device (and for each device the dim level, ramp-rate, and group/button number) to each scene. If an identical scene is to be triggered by (say) 2 different controllers and also by the PowerLinc, this involves 9 (dimmers) x 3 (controllers) x 3 (settings per dimmer) = 81 actions by the user. It is cumbersome to select each device (out of ~ 80 in my case) from a single non-hierarchical popup menu over and over. It is easy to leave one out or to select the wrong one (I find myself printing out screen-shots of the Link-Manager window so that I can manually duplicate the list). Now suppose that there are 5 different scenes for that room that I want to set up. Now we are up to 405 user actions. And that's just one room!

The result is that, although I have purchased and installed the infrastructure for doing it (dimmers, controllers, Indigo) I haven't actually done it for most rooms in my house. I am too busy with other parts of my life.

What would make it all easier are a few related features of the link-management in Indigo.
1) Allow the user to copy sets of devices (and their associated dim settings and ramp rates) from one scene (one group number) to another and from the device link manager to the PowerLinc manager and back.
2) Allow group modification of ramp-rates and dim levels within a scene (or even across scenes; suppose I want to change the ramp rate for every device in every scene from one value to another).
3) Allow the loading of the current on/off/dim state of a set of devices into the link table for the current scene.

I thought of providing some of this functionality for myself via scripting, but the link tables are not visible or modifiable from the scripting environment (making them so is a request I made several years ago).

One suggestion for a user interface would be to make the link tables more like an excel spreadsheet, with the cells editable in-situ instead of in fields at the bottom of the window and with cut/copy/paste enabled. While you're at it, bring the "persistent" attribute into the table as well; making that globally visible would eliminate a lot of errors.

Thanks for all your good work.

Thanks for the feedback.

It's always a tradeoff - do we improve functionality that's typically performed much less often or do we add new features. Thus far the latter generally takes the priority and frankly it's not likely to change. We have about the best INSTEON link management of any software (as cumbersome as it may seem) - spending even more time on even greater INSTEON-specific functionality over adding new devices (FanLinc, Energy Display, etc.), new technology (Z-Wave, ZigBee, IP-based devices) that will allow us to reach more people, Indigo Touch features, etc., doesn't have very good ROI.

We certainly want to be the software that's the easiest to use on any platform - but given that there are 2 of us in the company we just can't do everything. When we're in certain areas of the code we always look at the feature request list and determine if there are requests we can do at the same time and within a reasonable timeframe so it's possible we can address some of this the next time we're in the Mac client - but that may not be for a while.

Sigh... Well, I just thought I'd ask before devoting 10-20 hours to link set-up. I'm very pleased with your product and plan to use it for years to come. Keep up the good work.

Dude, set up one scene with a trigger, and then just duplicate the whole thing, go into the list of actions, and tweak the brightness levels (there's buttons in there for 'next', etc...). Now you have two scenes. Duplicate those, and just change the triggers.

Or, set up your scene as an Action Group, and then pick different triggers that just trigger the Action Group. Then you can duplicate your action group for the next scene and quickly adjust the brightness levels.

There's no way setting up 3 scenes of 9 devices each triggered 3 ways should take 10 hours... More like 10 minutes.


...but I'd still like to be able to copy paste line items from the list of actions...

I think he wants to use INSTEON scenes/groups though, and not Action Groups that send out individual message to each module. The former cannot be duplicated within the Indigo UI while the latter can.

One thought though regarding:

wikner wrote:If an identical scene is to be triggered by (say) 2 different controllers and also by the PowerLinc, this involves 9 (dimmers) x 3 (controllers) x 3 (settings per dimmer) = 81 actions by the user.

If you are going to have the scene in the PowerLinc, then why have it in the individual controllers as well? Instead, just create a Trigger Action in Indigo for when those controller buttons are pressed and have them send the PowerLinc group/scene. It will be a hair slower, but much easier to manage and if you ever need to edit the scene it the change will apply across all controllers that trigger the scene.

Mr. Swancoat: I don't think you understand what I want to do. Of course I could implement scenes with action groups, but these would require that Indigo server be constantly running in order to function. While it usually is, sometimes the Mac it is on breaks down or is in need of maintenance (this seems to happen most often while I am on vacation). In those circumstances the scenes won't work. Also, scenes implemented as action groups are necessarily sequential. This has 2 effects: First the sequencing is noticeable. Second, it involves considerable Insteon message traffic. In my house this is less reliable, with some devices failing to respond to the scene commands (presumably due to message-ACK collisions). Finally, in my house at least, action groups don't always work because Indigo doesn't receive the trigger. And when they do work, it is often with a quite noticeable time delay; sometimes several seconds.

For these reasons I want to implement the scenes as actual Insteon links within the devices themselves. These scenes will work even when Indigo is down and are much faster and more reliable. The lack of cut and paste within the link manager means that it WILL take me many hours to implement multiple scenes in multiple rooms.

If you are going to have the scene in the PowerLinc, then why have it in the individual controllers as well? Instead, just create a Trigger Action in Indigo for when those controller buttons are pressed and have them send the PowerLinc group/scene. It will be a hair slower, but much easier to manage and if you ever need to edit the scene it the change will apply across all controllers that trigger the scene.

I am considering this. To minimize the number of keypadLincs, I have implemented "all lights on" scenes in the PowerLinc so that a double-up-click on one of the devices in the scene turns on the rest. But to achieve more subtle control, and to have things work when Indigo Server is off, I want to do it with device links.

wikner wrote:Mr. Swancoat: I don't think you understand what I want to do. Of course I could implement scenes with action groups, but these would require that Indigo server be constantly running in order to function. While it usually is, sometimes the Mac it is on breaks down or is in need of maintenance (this seems to happen most often while I am on vacation). In those circumstances the scenes won't work. Also, scenes implemented as action groups are necessarily sequential. This has 2 effects: First the sequencing is noticeable. Second, it involves considerable Insteon message traffic. In my house this is less reliable, with some devices failing to respond to the scene commands (presumably due to message-ACK collisions). Finally, in my house at least, action groups don't always work because Indigo doesn't receive the trigger. And when they do work, it is often with a quite noticeable time delay; sometimes several seconds.

For these reasons I want to implement the scenes as actual Insteon links within the devices themselves. These scenes will work even when Indigo is down and are much faster and more reliable. The lack of cut and paste within the link manager means that it WILL take me many hours to implement multiple scenes in multiple rooms.

Ahhh, I see. Yeah, that is a problem. I have a similar problem with visible sequencing and missed signals with my media room (6 devices). However, I can't use a 'Insteon Scene' to define them because Insteon Scenes can't specify things as 'off', they only specify how much you want to turn things 'on'.