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Setting Up Animated Notifications • Hubitat
Setting Up Animated Notifications • Hubitat

This article will teach you how to setup animated notifications inside the Hubitat app as well as provide specific examples.

Eric Maycock avatar
Written by Eric Maycock
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

This guide will show you how to use Rule Machine in Hubitat to activate the notification feature of our Red and Blue Series products. There are a couple of different ways to do this and they are as follows:

While Rule Machine is very powerful, it's not always for the faint of heart, so that's why we recommend using the Community App as it was designed specifically for Inovelli Notifications. We'll provide instructions for both methods below.

Using the LED Mini-Dashboard App

This method is the easiest and most user-friendly way to set your notifications and was designed by @jonathanb (thank you!) in the Hubitat Community for Inovelli Notifications.

In this example, we will set a notification to alert us at 8:00 am to remind us to take our morning medication.

  1. To begin, please install the Hubitat Package Manager

  2. In addition, make sure you have the most up-to-date device drivers installed for your Inovelli switches

  3. Next, click on, "Apps"

  4. Then click on, "Hubitat Package Manager"

    NOTE: If this is your first time using it, you will be asked to map your existing apps to packages -- click next and done, then click on, "Hubitat Package Manager" again on the, "Apps" screen.

  5. Click on, "Install"

  6. Click on, "Search by Keywords"

  7. In the search field, type in, "LED Mini-Dashboard" and click, "Next"

  8. Click on, "LED Mini-Dashboards for Inovelli Switches by Jonathan Bradshaw"

  9. Click on, "Next"

  10. Read and agree to the license agreement and click, "Next"

  11. Once the installation is complete, click, "Next" and it will take you to the, "LED Mini-Dashboard" main page

  12. You are now ready to create your animated notification -- click on, "Add new LED Mini-Dashboard topic"

  13. Click on, "Select the target device type" and then select the Inovelli device you have (in this case, we'll be using the, "Inovelli Dimmer Red Series LZW31-SN")

  14. Click on where it says, "Select Inovelli ____ devices to include in mini-dashboard topic" (the blank space will show what you selected in Step 12)

  15. Select the Inovelli switch (or switches) that you want to set notifications on and click, "Update"

    NOTE: If you don't see your switches listed, make sure you have the correct switch selected in Step 12 and that you have the most up-to-date device driver installed for that device

  16. Click on, "Select to add a new Notification Scenario"

  17. Click on, "Click to set" under, "Priority". Here's where you'll set the priority of your notifications to run if you have multiple notifications. The higher the number, the greater the priority. For example, if you have a notification to let you know if your garage door is open past 10pm set to priority 19 and a notification that alerts you if motion is detected after sunset set to priority 7, the one set to priority 19 will take precedence. Both will run, but the one set to 19 will run first.

    In this case, we'll set the priority to 20.

  18. Next, click on, "Click to set" under, "LED Number". You will see a drop-down with either, "Notification", LED #'s 1-7, and/or "All LEDs". If you only have the option for, "Notification", then just click on that. However, if you have the option for the various LED #'s, you can choose to have a notification run on certain LED's (#1 is at the bottom of the switch, whereas #7 is at the top). Lastly, "All LEDs" mean that the notification will run on all of the LED's. In our case, the LZW31-SN only shows, "Notification" so we will click that.

  19. Next, select the notification you want to run. In this case, we are setting a purple pulse, so we will choose, "Pulse"

  20. Next, click on, "Click to set" under the, "LED Color" and choose the color you want. In this case, we will choose Violet.

  21. Finally, if you want to change the duration of the notification, click on the drop-down under, "Duration" and select your value. In this case, we want the animation to run until we manually dismiss it (by double-tapping the configuration button) so we will leave it as, "Infinite"

  22. Finally, select the brightness level you'd like the LED Bar to be when the notification goes off. In this case, we'll leave it at 100%.

  23. Now it's time to set the rule that will activate the animation. Click on, "Click to set" under, "Select rules to activate notification LED ____ effect" (the blank space is the animation you selected in Step 19).

    NOTE: Here is where your situation may vary depending on the rule you're trying to create. This is a simple example, but you can make yours as complex as you want. We will continue with the steps below to show how to finish this specific rule.

  24. In this example, since we are setting a notification to take our medicine at 8:00 am, we will select, "Time is after".

  25. Since we want it to be 8:00 am, we will input that value in the, "After Time" field

  26. We can leave, "Cooldown period (minutes)" blank as that relates to when a variable happens more than once (ie: if you have a motion rule where motion is detected, you can set a cooldown of 5 minutes so that any motion detected within 5 minutes of the last motion detection doesn't start another animation). Click, "Done".

  27. Feel free to name your dashboard

  28. If all looks good, click, "Done". You're all set!



Using Rule Machine

This method is a little more complex than using the Community App, but it offers more flexibility.

In this example, we will set a notification to alert us at 8:00 am to remind us to take our morning medication.

  1. Start by opening up your Hubitat web app and clicking on, "Apps"

  2. Next, click on, "Add Built-In App"

  3. Type in, "Rule Machine" and then click on, "Rule Machine"

  4. Click on, "Create New Rule"

  5. Name your rule and then click, "Done"

  6. Click on, "Select Trigger Events"

  7. Here's where your trigger may be different from the directions -- feel free to enter in whatever trigger you'd like to start the notification. In our example, we're going to set the notification to turn on at 8:00 AM, so we'll select, "Certain Time (and optional date)"

  8. Enter in the time you'd like the notification to turn on and click, "Done with this Trigger Event"

  9. Click, "Done with Trigger Events"

  10. Click on, "Select Actions to Run..."

  11. Click on the, "+" sign to create a new action

  12. Click on, "Set Variable, Mode or File, Run Custom Action"

  13. Click on, "Run Custom Action"

  14. Under, "Select capability of action device", select, "Switch"

  15. Click on, "Select Switches to act on", select your Inovelli switch that you want the notification to run on and then click, "Update"

  16. Click on the drop-down under, "Select custom command" and then select, "ledEffectALL"

  17. Click on the drop-down under, "parameter type" and select, "number"

  18. Open up a new tab and go to the Inovelli Switch Toolbox -- Here's where we'll get the values for your notification (and you can preview what the notification will look like)

  19. First, click on, "Switch Type" and select the Inovelli switch you want to set notifications on. In this case, we're going to be setting notifications on the Blue Series 2-1 Switch, so we'll select, "VZM31-SN" under Zigbee.

  20. Now you can play around with the LED Notifications to find the one you want. First, make sure, the, "Notifications" tab is selected as shown below

  21. Next, work your way down starting with, "Color" (use the slider to select the color you want), then, "Brightness Level" (use the slider to select the brightness percentage of your LED Bar during the notification), then the duration (use the slider to select the seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc) and finally the, "Effect" (click on the drop-down to select the animated notification effect).

    In our example, we'll have the LED Bar pulse purple at 100% for an indefinite amount of time (so we'll manually clear it by tapping two times on the config/favorites button).

  22. Now, we'll take the configuration value and put it back into Hubitat. Please pay attention here as it can be confusing and it will vary by device model.

    Blue Series Switches (all models) - please write down the four values (ie: 5,10,199,255) as we'll use this in the next step


    Red Series Switches (all models) - copy the entire string of values (ie: 100600523)

  23. Go back to the Hubitat action screen and type in the proper integer. Please pay attention here as it can be confusing and it will vary by device model.

    Blue Series Switches (all models) - start with the first number in the string you obtained from Step 22


    Red Series Switches (all models) - look at the parameter number at the bottom of the Inovelli Switch Toolkit page (it will either be: Parameter 99 for the 2-1 Switch, Parameter 16 for the LZW31-SN, Parameter 8 for the LZW30-SN, or Parameter 24 or 25 for the Fan/Light Switch)


    Since we're using the Blue Series 2-1 Switch (if you have a Red Series switch, read the instructions under the picture below), we'll follow the instructions for the Blue Series Switches and start with the first number in the string of numbers we obtained from Step 22 which is 5 (ie: 5,10,199,255). Enter the number 5 where it says, "integer value" and click anywhere on the screen (do not click, "Done with action" yet).


    If you have a Red Series switch, enter in the parameter number from Step 23 (ie: 99, 16, 8, 24 or 25).

  24. If you have a Red Series Switch, click, "Done with action" and move to Step 28. If you have a Blue Series Switch, please keep reading.

    Since we have a Blue Series Switch, we're going to have to add another three (3) parameters. Please click on, "Add another parameter"

  25. Click on the drop-down under, "parameter type" and select, "number"

  26. Enter in the second number from the string of numbers you copied from Step 22. In our case, the second number is 10.

  27. Repeat Steps 24 through 26 two more times and enter in the third and fourth values from the string of numbers from Step 22 (in this example, we will use 199 and 255). Once completed, your screen should look like the one below where it lists out all four numbers by, "Parameters". Finalize the step by clicking, "Done with action".

  28. Click, "Done with Actions"

  29. Click on, "Install Rule"

  30. Finally, click on, "Done" and test out your notification

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