Setting groups to the level of another group?

Hi,
I'm surprised I can't find a way to do this yet - perhaps someone more experienced than I can point out a practical way using what I have....

I have a number of areas "adjoining" - where it is often un-necessary to have all the lights turned on together. As such, they are on seperate GAs, and with seperate n-way switching. What I would like, is to be able to turn on additional lights "into" the same group - so they will come on at the same brightness as
the existing lights. Yes, this means that if the main lights are off and you try to turn "on" the adjacent lights they will come "on" at 0%, but that isn't a problem - if lighting were needed in that area, the main lights would already be on.
(It gets slightly more complicated - the main lights get turned on by a schedule from the b&w c-touch at sundown)

In other words, I want switch (stairs) to ramp/cycle group Stairs but when the switch (Hall) is operated, I want the group Hall_Lights to go to the level of GA Stairs.

Make any sense? Any ideas/suggestions?

*ALL* switches are Neo, the only other smarts in the system is the ctouch.

 

Output logic is good!

Hi Ross,

I reckon you could do these easily using min logic on the dimmer channel for the hall lights. If you set the Stairs as the logic group and select 'min' logic, when you switch the Hall Lights group on, the dimmer will go to the lowest level out of the hall and stairs groups.

Presto!

Cheers,
Mark.

 

Will that work across dimmer units? The hallway is quite long and its groups are spread across four (physical) dimmers. (There are 8, 8-channel dimmers and 5, 12-channel relays in the project).

(later)

It looks like I can use different units, so that's a bonus.... but in two areas the lights are CFL's on relays - and I can't see an equivalent function in the relay modules..... any work-around here?

 

Output Logic

Hi Ross,

Not 100% sure what you mean, but there is no problem with setting up the same logic across several output units. You should be able to control the 4 groups on seperate dimmers.

The relays are going to be more difficult. The best option i can see would be to set up the same logic as for the dimmers, then set the Turn On level for the relay channel to somewhere between your normal dimmed level and 100%. (this will require some fiddling to get right...)

The result should be that the relay channel will be On when the minimum of the two groups is above the turn on threshold, and it will turn Off once the minimum of the two groups falls below the threshold.

(Note: in Relays 'min' logic is known as 'and')

Good luck!

Cheers,
Mark.

 

Yup, figured that bit out...

Ahhhh. That's the bit I was missing! In hindsight, it's obvious. Thanks, I'll go do battle with the thing now!

RossW