I have multiple areas defined in my setup, including examples like:
Backyard
Front Yard
Sideyard
Pool
etc.
The same general thing applies inside the house - kitchen, dining room, etc.
What I would like to be able to do is (I think) simple. I want a ‘grouped’ area called “outside” for example and it would be a grouping/collection of other areas. I asked in the Discord, but after going back and forth some, none of us were clear if this can be done. I want to be able to ‘Turn off all outside lights’ and similar.
At the moment, the Area feature is very limited in its usefulness. Unlike the Group feature, it doesn’t supported nesting (i.e. an Area containing other Areas). In addition, it cannot be referenced in a template so there’s not much you can actually do with it.
The easiest way is to create a Group containing your outside lights. Turning the group on/off will control all of its members accordingly.
There is also a Light Group which is designed exclusively for containing light entities. A Light Group presents itself like a light entity (in the UI) so in addition to turning on/off all its members, you can adjust their brightness (and color if they support it).
Well thanks, that’s a clear answer - ‘Areas are limited right now’.
So if I understand correctly, what I’ll need to do is create a group (each) for things like:
outside light group
outside fan group
outside switch group
outside everything group
so I could ‘turn off outside lights’,
‘turn off outside fans’, etc?
Correct. You can also nest them to create hierarchies. For example, I have two groups where one contains interior doors and the other has exterior doors and a third group contains the other two groups.
doors_interior <- List of all interior doors doors_exterior <- List of all exterior doors doors_all <- List of the two groups above
The same principal is applied to lights (interior basement, interior first floor, interior second floor, all interior lights, exterior lights, all lights, etc).