Switchbot Scenes and Virtual Devices (remote)

Devices
1

Hi everyone,

I just got my Swithcbot Hub Mini and Bots yesterday and the App works flawlessly so thank you @Adrian_Rockall for that. Now I can automatically enjoy a cop of coffee in the morning thanks to the bots :slight_smile:

Challenge
I also just found out that remotes that are taught are not able to be imported into Homey.
Huge disappointment as I bought the hub solely to control our kitchen extractor hood. I was hoping to create my own remote in SB hub and import it into Homey - but not possible :confused:

Possible solution
I then found out that scenes from the Hub can be imported into Homey which makes it possible to push commands from Homey through the SB hub and then control my extractor hood.

Now I want to create a virtual remote in Homey and map the keys to the scenes available from SB hub.
These are:

  • Turn on/off lights
  • Increase suction
  • Decrease suction
  • Tune color (warmer white)
  • Tune color (colder white)

I have used the Virtual Devices from @Arie_Laxed a lot but it doesn’t really cut it. I was hoping to create a flow like:
When Volume Up Button (on virtual device) has been pressed, then trigger Increase suction scene in Homey.
The problem here is that I can only chose “If a button has been pressed” and “Device is turned on/off”.

So the limitations in Virtual Devices and Switchbot app has kinda stopped me fulfilling my automation wishes for my extractor hood.

Does anyone have any idea how to solve this?
Thanks in advance and thanks to the two developers mentioned for an awesome job!

@Adrian_Rockall will the Homey app eventually support “Other” devices from SB Hub?
@Arie_Laxed do you have a workaround for the Virtual Devices app?

2

The problem is there is no way for Homey to read the remote settings back from the hub. All I can do is predefine a capability to send a specific command.
So when I query the hub for devices, all I get for remotes is the name and the generic type:

    {
      "deviceId": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
      "deviceName": "fan",
      "remoteType": "DIY Fan",
      "hubDeviceId": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
    }

So for known types I create buttons in the driver to send the appropriate command for specific remote buttons.

3

Sorry, I’ve no idea either.
From Virtual Devices point-of-view: if you need an action like “send a request to an API”, then I don’t regard that as Virtual anymore. In other words: you still need a different app, like the SwitchBot-app, to do those kind of actions.

4

I figured it out as Adrian updated the Swithcbot app :wink: