🎮 ZHA, deCONZ, Zigbee2MQTT - Ikea E1744 SYMFONISK rotary remote Universal blueprint - all actions - control lights, media players and more with Hooks

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @MikiZed, thank you for the additional info you provided. I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you sooner.

I’m currently working on the debouncing feature for the E1812 controller, thanks to the valuable contribution of a user who opened the Pull Request on GitHub and is providing lot of support on the development of this feature.

We’ll then move to apply debouncing to the E1744 and any other controller which might need it.
I’ll let you know as soon as debouncing is available for this device.

Thank you for your time and patience.

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @Sunckist, I’m sorry for what you are experiencing with this blueprint.

I think your issue is related to what @MikiZed reported. I’ll let you know as soon as debouncing is implemented for this controller, but for now you can follow this issue on GitHub, originally opened by a user which reported a similar problem with the E1744.

Thank you for your time and patience.

[mat44150 (mat)]

Hi @epmatt,
I am having troubles with the Blueprint when using it as a media control remote with deconZ (Conbee USB).
It works well unless I play too much with the rotating button. The Symfonisk becomes totally unresponsive until I restart home assistant.
The events are still fired by the button when this happens but the automation simply does not take them into account.
Actually, when looking at the automation debugger, the log says the automation is still running.

It seems possible to reproduce the problem by quickly rotating the button from left to right
Have you seen this problem ?
Thanks!

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @mat44150, thank you for reporting here,
a user reported the same problem on this issue on GitHub, which we’re currently in the process of fixing.

Just as a feedback, are you also using the Media Player Hook, or did you just provide custom actions to the Controller blueprint, to implement the media control functionality?

Moreover, Which version of Home Assistant are you running? It looks like part of this issue was originated by a bug in the automation integration which persisted until 2021.4.6. We were able to spot it while working on this problem.

By the way, I’ll let you know as soon as your issue is solved. Thank you for your patience and time.

[mat44150 (mat)]

Hi @epmatt,
Thanks for your reply! Glad that you are actively looking after this !
I am only using the controller blueprint, I was a bit confused with media player hook, and actually I didn’t really see the need for it. The controller blueprint was easy enough to configure and it actually works very well (except for the above mentioned issue). Blueprints are quite new to me and I perhaps need to use them more to see the interest of the abstraction layer you proposed.
Regarding H.A. version, I was running 2021.4.5. Based on your feedback, I have updated to 2021.4.6. I have been playing with the button for 10 minutes and it’s still responsive ! Thanks a lot !

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @mat44150,

I’m happy to hear that your issue is solved. We’re now working on the debouncing feature, which seems to be relevant especially for ZHA users.

I am only using the controller blueprint, I was a bit confused with media player hook, and actually I didn’t really see the need for it.

Hooks can be particularly useful for users which don’t want to write any custom action for common functionality (such as controlling lights etc.).

Think of them like a safe and easy “Plug and Play” solution. Of course, if you want more control on actions to perform with your controller, you can directly write custom actions in the controller blueprint, which can also run alongside a Hook (eg. if you want to extend the Hook functionality).

If you haven’t already I highly suggest you to read the Controllers-Hooks ecosystem documentation on the Awesome HA Blueprint project website. It will give you an overview on how the whole ecosystem works, and provide different configurations you can achieve with these blueprints.
And, as always if you have any additional doubts I’d be glad to answer your questions.

Thank you for your feedback!

[mat44150 (mat)]

Thanks for the link! I didn’t read this specific page, and now it’s more clear to me, especially thanks to the diagrams.
Just to be sure I understood how the two automation work together: when configuring a controller automation, the action inputs must not be set, right ? Otherwise, two actions would be triggered when the controller is associated with an hook automation ?

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @mat44150,

Just to be sure I understood how the two automation work together: when configuring a controller automation, the action inputs must not be set, right ? Otherwise, two actions would be triggered when the controller is associated with an hook automation ?

Exactly! With Hooks you can skip configuring custom actions, since the functionality for eg. controlling a light is already embedded in the Hook. With the Hook setup, custom actions have the only purpose to “extend” the Hook functionality.

Hope this helps.

[JeromeO (Jérôme Oudoul)]

Before I invest in that Ikea rotary remote, I just want to make sure : with that blueprint and the light hook, I could turn on/off, dim/brighten a group of LIFX wifi bulbs ? thank you

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @JeromeO,

with that blueprint and the light hook, I could turn on/off, dim/brighten a group of LIFX wifi bulbs ?

exactly, you can achieve the desired functionality by combining this Controller blueprint and the Light Hook blueprint, which supports any light entity, including light groups.

By the way, I’d like to suggest you to go for the IKEA E1743 On/Off Switch & Dimmer, if available in your country. In my little experience it’s generally a more reliable device than the rotary remotes from IKEA (E1744 and the older ICTC-G-1), and it should be a bit cheaper too.

Here’s the link to the Controller blueprint for the E1743:

• 🎮 ZHA, deCONZ, Zigbee2MQTT - Ikea E1743 On/Off Switch & Dimmer Universal blueprint - all actions + double click events - control lights, media players and more with Hooks

The suggested blueprint will also enable double click events, which are not natively exposed by the device itself, thus increasing the number of custom actions you can trigger with this remote.

Happy automating!

[JeromeO (Jérôme Oudoul)]

Thank you Matteo.

Actually I’ve just bought the Ikea Tradfri 5-button round remote (E1810) and downloaded your corresponding blueprint.
It works fine with the central button (on/off) and the up/down button (brightness) and find it rather WAF compliant (just have to figure out how to link the left/right arrows with cool/warm whites but I’ll look into the corresponding thread)
That 5-button remote is probably more intuitive to use than the Ikea E1743 whose combinations of single/double/long presses is sometimes far from obvious when you’re not the one who programmed it !
I will check its blueprint as well nonetheless. Who knows I might give it a try.
Thanks again for the handy blueprints !

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @JeromeO,

thank you so much for your feedback!
The E1810 is definitely a great choice, since it also provides much more flexibility than the E1743 thanks to its 5 buttons. If you have any questions or issues in setting up your automations just let me know, I’d be happy to help.

Thank you for checking out these blueprints!

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi there!

To @MikiZed, @Sunckist and anyone who might be interested in this feature, I’ve just pushed an update for the blueprint which adds support for debouncing.

Debouncing allows to filter duplicate events which might be fired by this controller. This unexpected behaviour was reported for devices connected with the ZHA integration.

If you plan to update this blueprint, please read carefully the changelog and documentation, which also provides guidance on how to enable debouncing.

This update should solve your issues with duplicate action runs. If something is not working as intended after the update, please let me know.

Thank you for your patience, and happy automating!

[robertlerd (Robert)]

Hi there! Thanks for all your work on these blueprints. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any success getting this to work.

I have the E1744 Rotary Knob configured with the controller blueprint and the Media Player Hook. The E1744 is connected through the deconz and I’m trying to control a Sonos.

I’m not too familiar with the code stuff but found this red within the controller trace timeline.

Any suggestions?

[jpleite]

You need to create an input_text helper like attached and then use it on the automation.

[epmatt (Matteo Agnoletto)]

Hi @robertlerd, thank you for your nice feedback!

What @jpleite suggested (thank you so much for the support ) should solve your issue: you need to provide a valid input_text entity for the helper_last_controller_event input, as described in documentation.

Thanks!

[robertlerd (Robert)]

Thanks! I must have missed that part in the documentation. It is working for me now.

[mat44150 (mat)]

I also had issues with duplicate actions with the deCONZ integration, so I updated blueprints (both the controller and media hook). I have no more duplicated actions (skipping one song when using the next or previous track actions with a media player), which is great!
However, I have now a far worse problem: rotating the button to increase the sound creates an endless loop that turns the volume to the maximum.
I have set the debouncing value to 100ms as suggested if that matters. Could it be a problem with my automation configuration, or could it be bug with the blueprint ?
Thanks !

[thedrinkeno]

Light Hook - Control any light (RGB, color temp, brightness) with one of the supported controllers

I am having difficulties setting up the light hook to work with my E1744 controller: Controller yaml: alias: Controller - IKEA E1744 SYMFONISK Rotary Remote description: '' use_blueprint: path: EPMatt/ikea_e1744.yaml input: controller_entity: sensor.symfonisk_action integration: Zigbee2MQTT helper_last_controller_event: input_text.symfonisk_text Light hook yaml: alias: Hook - Light description: '' use_blueprint: path: EPMatt/light.yaml input: light_color_mode: Auto …

I bought an E1744 yesterday and tried to use this blueprint with the light hook and it did not work. Initially I thought this was a light hook issue, so I posted a reply onto the light hook thread (linked above).

Later, I realised that my remote is firing events that are different from what is documented in zigbee2mqtt (IKEA E1744 control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT):

Triggered action (e.g. a button click). Value can be found in the published state on the action property. It’s not possible to read (/get) or write (/set) this value. The possible values are: brightness_move_up, brightness_move_down, brightness_stop, toggle, brightness_step_up, brightness_step_down.

The events I am getting are:

• rotate_right (instead of brightness_move_up)
• rotate_left (instead of brightness_move_down)
• rotate_stop (instead of brightness_stop)
• play_pause (instead of toggle)
• skip_forward (instead of brightness_step_up)
• skip_backward (instead of brightness_step_down)

So what I did to get this automation to work is that I changed /config/blueprints/automation/EPMatt/ikea_e1744.yaml

    zigbee2mqtt:
      rotate_left:
      # - brightness_move_down
      - rotate_left
      rotate_stop:
      # - brightness_stop
      - rotate_stop
      rotate_right:
      # - brightness_move_up
      - rotate_right
      click_short:
      # - toggle
      - play_pause
      click_double:
      # - brightness_step_up
      - skip_forward
      click_triple:
      # - brightness_step_down
      - skip_backward

I’m not sure if it’s due to the firmware version of my E1744 remote, or if it’s something wrong with my z2m, but here’s a screenshot of the device in zigbee2mqtt

Hope this helps anyone who is facing the same issue in the future!

[Nick4 (Nick)]

@epmatt: thank you for your work on this!

I just started with zigbee/deconz and also got this rotary remote to control my media players.
With the help of this blueprint I have created a basic automation but nothing happens…

- id: '1624872791126'
  alias: Controller - IKEA E1744 SYMFONISK Rotary Remote![bp|690x422](upload://jQlLS0vQc6z0Z6z7Z4pJnDfPfVM.png) 
  description: ''
  use_blueprint:
    path: EPMatt/ikea_e1744.yaml
    input:
      integration: deCONZ
      controller_device: cc744586ed184a772321a7299bed5723
      action_rotate_left:
      - service: media_player.volume_up
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kitchen
      action_rotate_right:
      - service: media_player.volume_down
        target:
          entity_id: media_player.kitchen

I reloaded the automations and restarted the server but still nothing. Started over, still the same.
Is it normal that when I go to devices I see the remote but no automations are linked to it?