Hey everyone! I wanted to share my experience with integrating virtual buttons in OpenHAB to control multiple lighting zones via Google Home. It’s been a fun project and I hope it might inspire others or provide some tips.
So, the goal was to create virtual buttons for each zone in my house. The idea is that when I turn off a zone, the lights won’t come back on with motion sensors—for example, when I’m watching a movie and don’t want the living room lights to turn on. Each button is named something like ‘motion sensor living room’ or ‘motion sensor kitchen.’ These buttons are linked to a logic where ‘yes’ turns them on and ‘no’ turns them off. I can ask Google to ‘turn off motion sensor living room,’ and it works perfectly!
But here’s where it got interesting. I wanted a single button to turn on and off all zones at once. After some research and experimentation, I created a flow that toggles all rooms at once. Initially, I faced a problem where the button wouldn’t toggle properly if it was already on. To solve this, I added a feature that automatically turns the button off after one second. This way, it resets the state without affecting the ability to turn everything off manually.
The process involved setting up the rules and flows in OpenHAB, testing each button to ensure they respond correctly to voice commands, and fine-tuning the automation to handle edge cases. It’s been a great learning experience, and now I have a seamless system for controlling my home’s lighting zones!
If anyone has tips on optimizing these flows or alternative methods, I’d love to hear them. Happy automating! 