WTH why isn't there an easy to use zwave multicast for turning on/off lights and switches?

Zwave multicast is awesome, however it can be difficult to use. I’m not sure how many people actually use it. It took me quite some time to generate a script that turns on/off lights and switches at the exact same time. The script requires a ton of upkeep because you have to be a wizard in Jinja and you need to understand zwave endpoints.

It would be great if there were 2 services that handled this for us.

zwave.multicast_on
zwave.multicast_off

In its first round, it would simply be an on off service that handles basic command class on/off values.

Zwave under the hood knows all the information required to make this work, so they should handle the binning and multicasting.

I envision the multicast on/off would bin all command classes together first, then bin endpoints second to minimize the number of mutlicast calls. We’d only need to support command class 38 (lights) and 37 (switches) first because this pretty much covers all on/off style actions in zwave.

The on service would accept a brightness value or nothing and properly pass it to each command class. 38 would get the brightness value translated to a range of 0 to 99, and 37 would be greater than 0 is True and 0 is False.

I currently have a script that handles this, however it heavily relies on labels and a config that matches under the hood values in zwave. It can be seen here

I think it’s supposed to. Or was last. Time I spoke with Fresh about it (I have a bank of 6 windows on the front of the house that (should) use it. Rn it’s not because one of the blinds joined improperly and is not using the same security level as the other 5… Apparently that breaks it. As soon as I fix that I’m back to trying this again.

But of course that one blind is 16 feet in the air and needs a ladder to reach the button…

Yes, this should account for covers. I remember someone requesting to add this to my script and we did pretty easily. I’m pretty sure they use command class 38 (same as light) for the tilt. I could be wrong. Either way, it would be great if there was a one stop stop for on/off open/close operations using zwave multicast.

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Excellent idea! Just up voted it!