[quote=“pascalw, post:5, topic:187067”]I’m keen to better understand how you set up the dimmable light as the device.
I have 16 HD blinds throughout the house with a mix of top to bottom (bedrooms) and shades (living/dining).
I created Luup code to sent telnet commands to trigger each scene I build on the ipad app - I can invoke the scene by calling the number. It’s a little bit of a workaround as I keep a file that shows each action for that scene and when I want a new combination I create a scene specific to that (for example when the sun is out on the back of the house all blinds at the back of the house will go down).
Unfortunately I have no ability to get slides to only go down at intermediate steps (unless I built a scene for say 1/2 closed).
I sounds like your solution may resolve this in a much more elegant way. Also I wasn’t aware the blinds would report an open or closed state.
Please let me know if you have a little more detail besides the xml’s you already shared 
Thanks,
Pascal[/quote]
If you look at the I-file I posted, there’s a function named “readGateway”. It basically opens up a telnet session with the gateway (or bridge), and sends “$dat\n”. The gateway responds to this by reporting things about itself, and then things about its configuration. For example, ours reports:
1 HunterDouglas Shade Controller
$dat
1 $mbc100-100-100-100-
1 $firm01-2018-HD gateway 2.18
1 $MAC0x000B3C606525-
1 $LEDl064-
1 $upd00-
1 $reset
1 $set006-
1 $ctMy Home
1 $cr00-02-0x809A-Studio
1 $cs00-00-08-Studio Front Left
1 $cp00-04-255-
1 $cs01-00-01-Studio Front Right
1 $cp01-04-255-
1 $upd01-
So “$ctMy Home” is the unimaginative name Linda gave our setup in the iOS app. The next line starts describing the room she set up named “Studio” (this is our only room, but think of these as being outline format). The next line describes a blind in that room and its name, but importantly, what the blind number is for commands. In this case, it’s the “00” right after “$cs”. The next line describes the current state of that blind: “04-255”. 04 means bottom rail position, 255 means fully open (scale runs 0-255, with 0 being closed). The next pair of lines describes another blind. We have TDBU blinds, so we can have values (and set values) for the top rail-18. You probably have scenes set up, and those show up in here somewhere as well. We don’t have any HD scenes set up, as we don’t need them.
In the I-file, I set up a pair of arrays at device startup. These arrays are indexed by the names of the Vera virtual dimmable lights I will create. The device name is one of the things we have access to at device instantiation, so knowing the name, we know what status strings ($cp…) to read to get current value, and what command strings ($pss) to use to set new values. Because we wanted to be able to group multiple blinds into single dimmable lights, the elements of these arrays are lists, so we can iterate over them.
You’ll need to get the results of $dat and figure out what blind numbers are what. Your blinds are all probably bottom-up, but you say you have shades as well…those probably have a different “rail” value you’ll need to discover and use in your match and command strings. And of course, you’ll need to use your IP address, not ours.
We found that we could telnet into the gateway, and then raise and lower blinds using the iOS app, and the commands and results being sent and received showed up in our telnet window. This may really help you figure out what’s what.
That’s pretty much it. The “readGateway” gets called at intervals so the “lights” show the right value whether the blinds get moved using that interface, the iOS app, IR remote, buttons on the blinds. There’s code in there to change light percentage (0-100) back and forth to HD values (0-255).
You’ll need to figure out your match strings and command strings, and set them up indexed by whatever you’re going to want to name the virtual dimmers.
Lastly–if you have a virtual dimmer for individual blinds and some of those grouped in dimmers, the group dimmer won’t reflect the actual setting of the individuals if they differ. You can see why that is, but I thought I’d mention it.
Nice thing about this is you can now just set up timed Vera scenes for setting blinds or groups of blinds to arbitrary values, simply by setting the dimmer percentage. And you can use SQC or whatever to manipulate and check on them from afar.
–Richard