Activating a single light part of a light group

Hi all,

I’m just starting out with making our home smarter and have set up the first smart lights (IKEA tradfri with a Conbee II) along with the first motion sensors.

All in all it works nicely. Setting up via ZHA went smooth enough, and I got the lights to go on and off with motion and I even got circadian lighting set up.

I do seem to have hit a problem with one automation I’m trying to make. In the hallway we have a light fixture which takes 3 bulbs. I’ve set these up in a light group for easier management and automation and that part works fine.

However, as a sort of night light I want to activate only 1 of those 3 bulbs, because even on the lowest brightness 3 is too bright in the middle of the night.
The problem is that I can’t seem to get only one to activate. As soon as I activate one, the rest in the group activate along with it. I don’t think it’s the automation because this also happens if activate a light via an entity card in the frontend.

Is there something I’m overlooking, or is this normal behaviour? Should I be using a different method or is this impossible while using a group?

My light group config:

light:
  - platform: group
    name: Gang 1V
    entities:
      - light.gang_1v_1
      - light.gang_1v_2
      - light.gang_1v_3

My automation:

- id: '1580598956111'
  alias: Licht gang 1V nacht
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.motion_gang_1v_1
    platform: state
    to: 'on'
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.motion_gang_1v_2
    platform: state
    to: 'on'
  condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: sun.sun
    state: below_horizon
  action:
  - entity_id: light.gang_1v_2
    service: light.turn_on

The lovelace card:

entities:
  - entity: light.gang_1v
    type: 'custom:slider-entity-row'
  - entity: light.gang_1v_1
  - entity: light.gang_1v_2
  - entity: light.gang_1v_3
title: Light
type: entities

You should show us your automation, but this is just a guess: You are turning on the whole group where you should only turn on the specific light.
So use this as action:

action:
- service: light.turn_on
  entity_id: light.gang_1v_2

As for the entity card, you possibly have setup the group again. You should setup the specific light.
Anyway, I am just guessing. Please, post your automation and maybe your lovelace config for the specific light to have a look.

Updated OP.

So, your automations are indeed fine. I have not used IKEA lamps, so I have no idea how you set them up, but could they possibly have a conflict? Are they using IP protocol? Does the manufacturer have their own app to control them? If yes, what happens if you turn on only one lamp using the app?
Since your HA config is fine, wait for someone else with experience on these lamps, to help you.
Sorry. :confused:

Do you have them setup as a Zigbee group on the Conbee? Are you using deconz or ZHA? Given that your config and automation look fine, I’d start looking at the Conbee2 and/or whatever ZHA stack you are using.

I’m using ZHA now. I switched from deconz yesterday for the better UI integration and in hopes of solving this problem, because I had it there too.

I had them in a Zigbee group in ZHA, because I thought those were the same as in deconz and forgot about them. I just removed the groups and restarted HA, but the problem remains.

As said, I’m still new to this so can you point me in the right direction on how I go about investigating further?

Also, I don’t know if this is relevant, but while I can’t turn on only one, I can turn them off one by one.

Hello and welcome to the forum. I’m not a profi! Have you ever started the automation manually? Go to the Automation on your StatesUI and press the symbol …


Then press “Trigger”,

when the lamp turns on the “Action” is okay. Then the “trigger” or the “condition” are the cause of the problem, right? Sorry if I give the wrong information here, please delete the post again …

Yup, tried that!

I’m sure it’s not the triggers that are the problem because I have a similar automation for during the day that works perfectly.

I’ve just played with this a little more and it seems the light group is responsible for this.
If I delete the group, I can turn on the lights one by one.
This kind of feels like a bug to me. Is this something I should open an issue for or something?

That wouldnt be the case, as I also have lightgroups of ledstrips and I can turn them on or off individually. Since you deleted the group, what happens if you create it again?
I dont know if you are aware of this, but try to turn on the light (after you re-create the group) using the developer tab. Does it turn on the other lights too or not?

20

Just tried it out, turning on one of the lights via the dev tools after recreating the group turns on the rest of them too.

I’ve finally figured it out.

I had the circadian lighting component set up to manage the lamps’ brightness, but I had set it up using the light groups I made instead of each light individually.
Adding every light one by one to the circadian lighting component setup fixed the problem, and I can now use both the group to turn on all the lights at once, or turn on only one light at a time.

3 Likes

@marinje Thanks I think this will solves it. I had exactly the same problem although using a zigbee light group and never even thought of my circadian lighting. This makes total sense, when you turn on a single entity in the group the group then shows as on. This would trigger CL, and when CL sets the brightness, it will set it on the group and the zigbee group will then in turn set the brightness for all the lights including the ones that are off.