Here's the setup:

--I have successfully programed in a number of KepadLinc buttons to activate specific scenes via Indigo (e.g. 'Welcome Home', 'Away', 'Good Night', etc.)

So, I press the the button, the LED illuminates and the scene comes on. Success! But then what? Obviously, I want the button LED to go off when the scene changes; most likely when another button and/or switch is pushed that changes that scene or the house state overall, OR at a logical time interval. (e.g. 'Good Night' goes off via the 'Sunrise' action group.)

Another example, 'Welcome Home' activates a lighted path to Kitchen and upstairs hallway. The Welcome Home LED should stay lit until one of those lights is dimmed or turned off or any other light in the house is turned on, meaning the 'Welcome Home' state has changed. As I understand it, we should think of the KeypadLinc LEDs as lights that need to be programmed accordingly and not necessarily directly related to the scene they activate.

My question, how do other Indigo users typically do this?

Here are some of my ideas, but I'd like to hear what others do:

**Create a reset all that will 'turn off' all buttons (deactivate the LEDs) and link it to all Switches.

**Add 'Turn off' all other buttons to button triggers-- e.g. when 'Away is pressed, all other buttons are turned off (LEDs deactivated).

**Is there a way to use action groups or are KeypadLinc LEDs always going to be controlled by Powerlinc?

hazlnut wrote:Here are some of my ideas, but I'd like to hear what others do:

**Create a reset all that will 'turn off' all buttons (deactivate the LEDs) and link it to all Switches.

**Add 'Turn off' all other buttons to button triggers-- e.g. when 'Away is pressed, all other buttons are turned off (LEDs deactivated).

**Is there a way to use action groups or are KeypadLinc LEDs always going to be controlled by Powerlinc?

All of the above are valid approaches (the question about the KPL LED's is a non-sequitur - action groups are one way of controlling the KPL buttons - either through executing PowerLinc scenes or using the new KPL button control actions, but you can also do that directly in Trigger or Schedule actions). You really have to ask yourself this question: when a KPL button is on, what does it really mean and it is really useful to have it represent that state.

For instance - I have several KPL's that have play/pause buttons on them - I keep those in sync with the current state of iTunes so it makes sense to have them reflect that binary state. Likewise, I have a few that represent reminders - so they're on while the reminder (in my case, the Pester part) is active and turn off when the reminder expires (and if they're on and I turn them off the reminders is cancelled).

OTOH, I have several buttons that do one thing and don't reflect state (volume up, volume down, execute a scene, etc). These I put into non-toggle mode so they only ever send the same command and Indigo responds exactly the same way each time they're pressed. No light because there is no "state" being represented by the light.

Lighting scenes are quite tricky - because everyone has a different concept of when a "scene" is on or off. Because of this, they are sorta inherently stateless though you can make them stateful with a lot of planning, thought, and infrastructure (as you point out - have a lot of triggers that will fire and take a scene out of "on" mode). My personal opinion is that those kind of stateful scenes are kind of useless.

I do have something that kinda represents a stateful scene - I have a button (and associated actions) that sets the house lights to "evening" mode. It runs automatically (and turns on a button in a central location) at a certain time of day. If the "evening" light mode isn't on but I want to turn it on early, I can press that button and it will execute that scene and turn on the button. When it's bedtime we press that button to put the house into "night" mode - it turns off various lights (and turns on a few), etc. I don't attempt to track what lights are doing in the interim because it just doesn't make any sense in my scenario.

jay wrote:
OTOH, I have several buttons that do one thing and don't reflect state (volume up, volume down, execute a scene, etc). These I put into non-toggle mode so they only ever send the same command and Indigo responds exactly the same way each time they're pressed. No light because there is no "state" being represented by the light.

How do you put KPL buttons in 'non-toggle mode'?


All great suggestions BTW

hazlnut wrote:How do you put KPL buttons in 'non-toggle mode'?

It's in the documentation for KeypadLincs from Smarthome.

jay (support) wrote:

hazlnut wrote:How do you put KPL buttons in 'non-toggle mode'?

It's in the documentation for KeypadLincs from Smarthome.

Just to follow up and clarify, (as Smarthome gives 2 'non-toggle' options) if I want a specific keypad button to active a scene (e.g. 'Welcome Home') and NOT become illuminated, I want to set the Button Mode to 'Non-Toggle On' , or 'Non-Toggle Off'.

The Smarthome 2486_r5 Manual is a little confusing as the chart on page 9 seems to indicate that in the 'non-toggle Always On or Always Off' the LED can somehow become illuminated.

I'm guessing the answer is set the non-toggle scene buttons to 'Non-Toggle Off'.

Interesting questions for sure. The scene thing IS weird. I have some scenes that have 5 or 6 lights at various settings. If I go and make one slightly dimmer is that scene still on, or not? Should I shut my LED off or not? Don't really know.

I just learned about non-toggle mode about 2 posts ago. In the meantime, I've been setting things up with a sort of 'synthetic' non-toggle mode. The last step in all of my action groups, is to shut off the LED in the button that activated it. This has a sort of 'feature' in that while the light is lit, I know my scene command is still being executed...

You're in luck. Since the last post on this thread, we've introduced the INSTEON Commands plugin which allows you to set the toggle mode from an Action. And you can specify whether the button will always send ON or OFF (sounds like you want OFF).

jay (support) wrote:You're in luck. Since the last post on this thread, we've introduced the INSTEON Commands plugin which allows you to set the toggle mode from an Action. And you can specify whether the button will always send ON or OFF (sounds like you want OFF).

When using an action group to set individual buttons into 'toggle off' mode, I assume we create the action group with all the buttons on each keypad we want put in that mode, then execute the action group once. -- In other words, one action group can be used to set all the keypad buttons in the house to the correct toggle mode.

Can we include "auto-off" instructions in that action group as well?

Yes - you only need to set them into toggle mode one time so the Action Group is a bit of a throwaway (we'll have a better solution for one-off commands like that in an upcoming release).

Auto-off isn't an INSTEON command - rather it's an Indigo action so you can't do an auto-off like that.

jay (support) wrote:Yes - you only need to set them into toggle mode one time so the Action Group is a bit of a throwaway (we'll have a better solution for one-off commands like that in an upcoming release).

Auto-off isn't an INSTEON command - rather it's an Indigo action so you can't do an auto-off like that.

I created an Action Group to set specific Keypadlinc Button into Non-Toggle Mode. This is what it looks like.

Type: Plugin
Plugin Insteon Command
Action Set Keypdlinc Button Toggle Mode

Edit Action Settings...

KeypadLinc: Kitch Keypad 6 ( I want buttons 4,5,6 in Non-toggle)

I checked "Check to put in Non-Toggle mode."
and I unchecked "Uncheck to send off in non-toggle mode:


I did this for each keypad in my house, checking and unchecking. I saved each time and then hit Execute All at the bottom. Powerlinc was sending commands for about a minute. Then I went and tested the buttons.

When I pressed them, they still illuminated?

What am I doing wrong, how do I get certain buttons in various keypads to not light up?

Execute one of the actions and watch the event log to make sure that the command is successful. Then press the button a couple of times waiting about 5 seconds in between. Copy/paste what you see in the event log.

Note that when in non toggle mode sending off, the button will still flash a couple of times when pressed but it should end up off.

jay (support) wrote:Execute one of the actions and watch the event log to make sure that the command is successful. Then press the button a couple of times waiting about 5 seconds in between. Copy/paste what you see in the event log.

Note that when in non toggle mode sending off, the button will still flash a couple of times when pressed but it should end up off.

I just went around and changed them all by hand, much faster.

Yes, I noticed the flashing, I like that .