Goodbye Brothers in crime!

S

Hi @ll, last days I migrated my last zwave device from Vera to zwave js in homeassistant. Out of 150 devices 1 did not go well initially but reinterviewing did it directly. Most work was to find the ex and inclusion procedure, 3 times, click, clack, whatever. I must admit that Vera is Lighting fast!!!!! With only 3 devices left, those were my under the floor switches I had to do last.

Now I am totally gone from Vera, altui, luup, etc. There's nothing more left for me on this forum. And since it was one of my "routine sites" reading I will save a few minutes a day skipping it.

I thank you all for all the kind help, warm words and laughter about the ezlo flop :-).

I hooe you all will be safe and healthy and whish you all the best!

I will stay on the homeassistant forum.

Goodbye!

General Discussion
Multidimensional Array

W

Hi @toggledbits it is possible to have an array in the following way

["Window 1"]["Status On"]
["Window 2"]["Status On"]
["Window 3"]["Status Off"]
["Window 4"]["Status On"]

That is, bidirectional.

How would this array be loaded? Normally we use Variable = ${{ ["Window 1", "Window 2", "Window 3", "Window 4"] }}, how would the array pair be loaded?.

Then the use, how would be a looping where I want to ask who has "Status On" and it returns me a new array with the part 1, that is the list of "Window"?

Or another search, I provide the information of the content of part 1, as "Window 2" and it would return me an array with the part 2 "Satus On".

Is it possible to have something like this?

Could you give the examples?

Thanks.

Multi-System Reactor
Vera StaticJSON Help - Showing a button’s status/selection (in/out) in the UI ?

Hi

I’m putting the finishing touches to a HDMI Matrix plugin, and while I have it working well - I can’t find anything on the Vera/MIOS wikis that tells me how I can show if a UI button is pressed or not (to reflect a input choice that is selected)

Here’s a screenshot of the child outputs I’ve created for the Matrix switcher. (The plugin creates a parent device and then 4 children to show the Matrix Outputs - parent is not shown - and the idea is that’s you select the input number for the respective output)

BB5B6001-294E-4AE9-A095-D2E639F56B9C.jpeg

Here is an extract of the button element in the associated JSON file used for the child devices..
{ "ControlGroup": "1", "ControlType": "button", "top": "0", "left": "0", "Label": { "lang_tag": "Input1", "text": "Input1" }, "Display": { "Top": 60, "Left": 50, "Width": 75, "Height": 20 }, "Command": { "Service": "urn:nodecentral-net:serviceId:SYMatrix1", "Action": "SYCall", "Parameters": [ { "Name": "action", "Value": "I1" } ] } },
The associated command calls the parent implementation file SYCall - (The value “I1” relates to a element of the URL that needs to be called to select that associated input)
<action> <serviceId>urn:nodecentral-net:serviceId:SYMatrix1</serviceId> <name>SYCall</name> <run> SYMatrix.SYCall(lul_device, lul_settings.action, lul_settings) </run> </action>
And then the Lua file (L_****) has holds the SYCall function
function SYCall (deviceNo, action, settings) ….. end

Code/Snippet library
[SOLVED] Help required updating nodejs on Raspberry Pi 4B - Bare Metal (without Docker)

J

I've recently updated to latest build 21332 and notice in the Readme file that I should update nodejs to 16.13.0 or higher before end of March. I've had a go at doing this, but think I've not done it correctly as I get the following responses in the terminal:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ node -v
v14.17.0
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ nodejs -v
v16.13.0

Is this correct? If not then what steps do I need to carry out to update nodejs properly.

Any help from the group would be much appreciated.

Multi-System Reactor
[SOLVED] How do I: delay a notification to fire only if the ruleset actually fires

G

Use case: Honeywell API gets easily flustered resulting in either one or both of my t-stats not receiving the change command/s. As such, I've written some "course correction" rulesets that basically look at the present situation and, if not matching what should be there, resends the command.

Now... logic says if the first send didn't get thru then APIs generally aren't going to like another one right on it's heels. To combat this, I've added a Restriction to the correction ruleset that says the status must exist for 420 seconds before it will fire. This (hopefully) also prevents a race state when the real rule set AND the correction spring into action at the same time.

I set a notification reaction to let me know a course correction had to be implemented but I've noticed that it fires even if the Restriction on the actual reaction never completes (is found unnecessary) and, as such, the correction ruleset never actually needs to fire.

The ask: can a notification be tied to fire ONLY if/when the action actually fires?

Hopefully that is clearer than mud.

Solved here https://smarthome.community/post/10319.

Multi-System Reactor
Z-Wave RF optimization

The expertUI of Z-way has a very interesting menu called analytics which I have not seen on any other controller.
My engineering curiosity and OCD tendency to want to optimize everything lead me to dig into it to see if I could get things working even better... even though nothing seem to be broken since my move from the UI firmware to z-way. So the background noise menu was of particular interest.

So here it is: This was my first shot of the starting block on the left side of this graph and you can see that at around 21:00 I did something to reduce the noise. My zwave.me uzb is connected to the vera through a usb extension cable and a usb hub but initially the vera and usb hub were sitting only a 6-7 inches (20cm) away from the uzb. Keep in mind the scale on both channels. What I did was to move the vera away from the uzb stick, to about 80cm but the big step was for me to use some metal leftover amazon gift card boxes I had from christmas and covered the usb hub with them. The step back up was me moving these macgyver shields around.

Screen Shot 2020-03-25 at 07.12.46.png

Next step is still goofing around with the shields to see if I could optimize further and while I initially made it worse, you can see that it got a little better later on. That USB hub is quite noisy.

Screen Shot 2020-03-25 at 13.41.30.png

After sometime, I just thought that the whole thing is just too sensitive any movement around that area could potentially cause problems. So I decided to remove the hub connected to the vera which really was just allowing to extroot the vera. Since I am no longer using the vera as a vera but only as a remote serial bridge, which doesn't write anything on its drive, I took it out. Again look closely at the scales. It did take the noise down another notch.

Screen Shot 2020-04-14 at 08.06.27.png

Now the stick is still sitting 14inch away from a UPS with a bunch of wall warts connected to it, powering a variety of devices like a hue 2 hub. I had the idea of replacing just the wall wart (AC-DC power supply) for the vera with a POE splitter. Since channel 2 is already hovering around the detection limit, I am only showing channel 1 here

Screen Shot 2020-04-15 at 19.03.27.png

This last step alone enable me to flip this other statistics menu:

Screen Shot 2020-04-24 at 07.36.36.png

It not only significantly decreased the CRC error rate but also made the foreign network impact greater that the CRC error bar negating the success on reception for the first time. When I took a zniffer to look into what these CRC error frames were, I discovered that they were all from my neighbor's network which is distant and have obviously poor signal strength. (Yes I can see his HomeId from the zniffer). The fact that I see less error means that my controller's range is greater. It is now able to recognize frames which are from my neighbor's instead of saying they are corrupted... Also The back off frames number decreased indicating less wasted/repeated frames on the network.

Z-Wave.me
URL - /data_request?id=lu_action&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1&action=RunLua&Code=

I’ve just started to have a play with iOS Shortcut and one of my test cases is to see if I can do the following
select a a file (.lua or .txt) on my iPad extract the entire script/contents encode the data obtained append the encode content to the end of the RunLua action. call the URL http://myIP/data_request?id=lu_action&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1&action=RunLua&Code=
Below is a screenshot of the workflow I have built in Shortcuts, which seems pretty straight forward, and it does generate a encoded URL, however the actual request itself does not complete. I get an ‘OK’ response back eventually, but the code is not actioned, and the logs don’t seem to tell me anything..

FAB8DB5F-9003-4624-BCF3-8F536A660D21.jpeg

The code I’m extracting from the Lua file works fine in the test Lua window, so i’m not sure what’s occurring differently, between the two routes, maybe it’s the encryption being used ?..

Is anyone able to help me test this, and see if they can generate a long / multi line RunLua encoded URL (if not via Shortcut, then by some that can help me with the root cause to then address that in Shortcut

Code/Snippet library
Using `format()` to build notification and other strings

A few new functions have worked their way into Reactor's expression language over the last couple of months, and while they are documented in the change logs and documentation, it seems some of you are not aware of them, so I'm going to pick one out and highlight it, maybe do others later...

A lot of you build strings in expressions by simple concatenation, and there's nothing wrong with that, but there's a new function in the expression language that can help you clean things up, in particular when handling numeric values.

I've noticed many of you will round your results either on the calculation, or in some cases, in a separate variable. For example, say we have a pair of expressions that retrieves the indoor and outdoor temperature from a sensor and the weather service:
indoor = getEntity( 'hubitat>144' ).attributes.temperature_sensor.value' ) outdoor = getEntity( 'weather>home' ).attributes.wx.temperature
The weather service, since it converts from degrees K in its reporting to degrees C, may have an irrational or repeating value (e.g. 8.233333333...). As a result, when you compute the difference, it, too, may have an irrational or repeating result, so you decide to round it to one decimal:
tempDiff = round( outdoor - indoor, 1 )
Then, perhaps you have a rule that if the differential is greater than 10 degrees, you send a notification, and the notification uses all three variables in the message string:
${{ 'The outdoor temperature is ' + outdoor + 'C and the indoor temperature is ' + indoor + 'C; the difference is ' + tempDiff + 'C' }}
This is fine, except that the outdoor temperature isn't rounded, so you decide to fix that. There are at least three ways: add a round() to the outdoor variable expression, or create a third variable like outdoorRounded = round( outdoor, 1 ), or, use the round() function into the substitution expression
${{ 'The outdoor temperature is ' + round( outdoor, 1 ) + 'C and the indoor temperature is ' + indoor + 'C; the difference is ' + tempDiff + 'C' }}
It's all getting very messy... Let's use format() instead of string concatenation, and not worry about rounding the difference, so we keep the maximum precision possible for any calcs or tests that use it. We go back to:
indoor = getEntity( 'hubitat>144' ).attributes.temperature_sensor.value' ) outdoor = getEntity( 'weather>home' ).attributes.wx.temperature tempDiff = outdoor - indoor
Now our string substitution:
${{ format( "The outdoor temperature is {0:.1f}C and the indoor temperature is {1:.1f}C; the difference is {2:.1f}C", outdoor, indoor, tempDiff ) }}
Here, format() is building the message string. Each {} (curly-brace) pair denotes the substitution of a parameter to follow. The number first inside the opening curly brace is the parameter number, starting from 0 as the first parameter. So parameter 0 in this example refers to the variable outdoor, and 1 is indoor, and 2 is tempDiff. Using the numbers, parameters can be inserted in any order.

Each of these substitutions in the example includes an optional format specification. If no format specification is given (e.g. {0}), then the parameter is converted to a string with no special formatting, but since we can get numbers like 8.233333... it's desirable to use some formatting to make it pretty. The format is separated from the parameter number by the : (colon) in the substitution. The format we're using for all three parameters is .1f, which is <width>.<precision>f. Any number before the dot is a fixed field width, but since we want no extra spaces, we just don't specify a width (it's blank for our example), and the value will take as much space as it needs. The f at the end tells format() that the value is going to be formatted as a floating point number, and the .1 before the f tells the formatter to display a single decimal digit. So our 8.23333333 value would be displayed as 8.2, without using extra functions or variables, or dropping precision in a calculation. For clarity, 10.875 would be displayed/inserted as 10.9 in this example, because the formatter will round the displayed result to the specified number of decimal digits.

Tip: for simple string insertions that require no special formatting, format() will let you skip the parameter numbers if the parameters are in the same order as the substitutions, and the default format is (generic) string (s), so format( "{} x {} = {}", "alpha", "beta", "gamma" ) produces the string alpha x beta = gamma.

Docs for format are in the Reactor documentation under the heading Special Reactor Functions.

Multi-System Reactor
Another transition from Vera to OpenLuup - PerH

So cool to find the forum of all the banned vera gurus!

I've had a Vera Plus for about 6 years now, and have had a fairly problem free time with it compared to many other stories. The last years have however been lacking in progression in many fields i'd like to explore, so now i'm looking closely at Openluup.
Other systems have been tested as well, but i find that the community and plugins made for vera is kind of special, and something i'd like to contribute to as well. (getting older and not wanting to change to new stuff probably plays a part too!)

So, my stab at opeluup starts with an HP Chromebox 1 i got for free. Its a fairly powerfull thing, but as google wants to sell new ones, its now EOL.
I wiped it clean and installed debian, as it seems to be the closest thing to raspberry which many use for openluup.

Openluup installed fine, and i got the vera bridge working fairly well by bothering ppl at the vera forum with questions. Its now running OK, but there seems to be an issue with Icons?

f0e29622-0397-4b84-819c-f1b632daab41-image.png

Also at the devices tab:
2892faff-a3ee-4f21-9db8-2a03f604fc74-image.png

I did the "GetFiles", and I see the /icons/ is populated, but no icons. In the luup log says that its trying to GET the icon, but returns no packages.
2020-09-15 17:04:30.818 openLuup.server:: GET /cmh/skins/default/img/devices/device_states/dimmable_light_off.png HTTP/1.1 tcp{client}: 0x55eca8d90cb8 2020-09-15 17:04:30.819 openLuup.server:: request completed (0 bytes, 0 chunks, 0 ms) tcp{client}: 0x55eca8d90cb8
I do have a UZB stick on the way, but before i go down that road i'd like to be sure that the installation is stable and sound.. Do I have all the nessecary packages/background processes? I did install cjson which helped on some things..

Also fairly new at linux in general, so bear with me. 😉

Roadmap:

Get the openluup/AltUI running smoothly
Transfer Z-wave devices
Transfer 433 devices (RFXtrx plugin)
Transfer Zigbee devices (Vera or mabye ezlo plus? zigbee stick?)

more questions will follow!

Blogs
Reactor (Multi-System/Multi-Hub) Announcements

Build 21228 has been released. Docker images available from DockerHub as usual, and bare-metal packages here.
Home Assistant up to version 2021.8.6 supported; the online version of the manual will now state the current supported versions; Fix an error in OWMWeatherController that could cause it to stop updating; Unify the approach to entity filtering on all hub interface classes (controllers); this works for device entities only; it may be extended to other entities later; Improve error detail in messages for EzloController during auth phase; Add isRuleSet() and isRuleEnabled() functions to expressions extensions; Implement set action for lock and passage capabilities (makes them more easily scriptable in some cases); Fix a place in the UI where 24-hour time was not being displayed.

Multi-System Reactor
Docker container for Z-Way

S

Hey guys ... I've started creating a Docker container for Z-Way.

I was previously using the Razberry2 but found it a bit slow on my Raspberry Pi 3. I could upgrade to a Raspberry Pi 4 but since I already run a dedicated Linux server and many Docker containers I thought it might make more sense to run Z-Way on there.

GitHub: https://github.com/sofakng/docker-zway
DockerHub: https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/sofakng/zway

This container is based on other containers that are no longer updated: (ruimarinho/docker-z-way) and (EugenMayer/docker-image-zway)

I'd love to hear feedback and any improvements that might be needed.

One thing I want to add immediately is to separate the configuration files from the Docker volume but it looks like Z-Way has several user configuration files/directories?
$ZWAY_DIR/config/Configuration.xml $ZWAY_DIR/config/Rules.xml $ZWAY_DIR/config/maps $ZWAY_DIR/config/zddx $ZWAY_DIR/automation/user_syscommands $ZWAY_DIR/automation/storage $ZWAY_DIR/automation/userModules $ZWAY_DIR/htdocs/smarthome/user $ZWAY_DIR/config.xml

Z-Wave.me
Rule for devices battery level ?

Hi

Wanted to create a rule for monitoring the battery level of Z-Wave devices on my Vera hub.

I can select the battery level as the trigger OK.

But not sure how to handle the Reaction to send an alert / notification ?

If in the triggers I have multiple devices monitored for their battery level

39a2f0af-c2e4-450b-a1ce-f542df31d02d-image.png

How could I create say a TTS announcement or text alert that mentions the name of the device who's battery level has dropped below 10% ? The device that has triggered the rule.

I'd rather not have to create an individual rule for each device etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Multi-System Reactor
Recommendation for new hub

S

My trusty vera plus is starting to have some issues that are making me think that it is about to die. i now get constant luup reloads even though i've moved almost everything except for z-wave devices and the iphone locator off that machine. it is even booting off an ssd drive to minimize wear and tear on the internal memory. I've moved all my logic off box to MSR, so it is just a glorified zwave adapter. I would love to hear any ideas that would make moving 60ish devices off that box to something else as painless as possible. the thought of excluding and including the devices sends shivers down my spine, so anything that helps me migrate the network would be greatly welcomed. anyone have any suggestions?

Multi-System Reactor
openLuup: MQTT server

Feedback / issues with openLuup's built-in MQTT server

openLuup
Pick the middle of 3 values.

I have 3 outside temperatures and I would like to pick the middle value of the 3 to use as the outside air temperature for calculations and logic.

MSR-OSATemps.png

The obvious, to me, mid() function does not seem to exist. What function can I use to pick the middle of the three values?

Thanks,
Tom

Multi-System Reactor
MQTT interface... time for some testing. Where are my experts?

I'm probably going to release my first pass at the MQTTController for Reactor (aka MSR) this week. It doesn't yet intrinsically know about a lot of devices, but you can train it for pretty much anything, I think, and it would be great if a couple of our heavy MQTT users could help check it out and maybe help contribute some device templates.

I'm hoping to package it up for mid-week, assuming the rest of life stays on track.

Success factors for the test: solid familiarity with MQTT, a big mix of devices, and comfortable editing YAML (for creating the templates/mappings).

Multi-System Reactor
MQTTController issue with reconnect to openLuup

Whenerver openLuup restarts or reloads Luup MQTTController can't reconnect and I have to restart Reactor to solve it.
[latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:39:17.842Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:39:17.844Z <MQTTController:ERR> Controller MQTTController#mqtt is off-line! [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:39:32.849Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:40:15.473Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:40:30.475Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:40:52.696Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:41:07.702Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:41:40.213Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:41:55.217Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:57:39.113Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:57:54.114Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:58:16.396Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:58:31.399Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:58:37.271Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> broker connection is offline; waiting for auto-reconnect [latest-21321]2021-11-24T07:58:52.278Z <MQTTController:NOTICE> attempting reconnect

Multi-System Reactor
MQTTController map different values from same topic?

I have multiple sensors connected to via Bluetooth to a Tasmota device.
All sensors report their values in the SENSOR topic, how do I map those to individual entities?

Multi-System Reactor
Video Doorbells

With the boom of video doorbells with the likes of Ring, Skybell and Next doorbell cams, I came to the realization that I did not want to be cloud dependent for this type service for long term reliability, privacy and cost.
I finally found last year a wifi video doorbell which is cost effective and support RTSP and now ONVIF streaming:

The RCA HSDB2A which is made by Hikvision and has many clones (EZViz, Nelly, Laview). It has an unusual vertical aspect ratio designed to watch packages delivered on the floor....
It also runs on 5GHz wifi which is a huge advantage. I have tried running IPCams on 2.4GHz before and it is a complete disaster for your WIFI bandwidth. Using a spectrum analyzer, you will see what I mean. It completely saturates the wifi channels because of the very high IO requirements and is a horrible design. 2.4GHz gets range but is too limited in bandwidth to support any kind of video stream reliably... unless you have a dedicated SSID and channel available for it.

The video is recorded locally on my NVR. I was able to process the stream from it on Home Assistant to get it to do facial recognition and trigger automations on openLuup like any other IPCams. This requires quite a bit of CPU power to do...
I also get snapshots through push notifications through pushover on motion like all of my other IPcams. Movement detection is switched on and off by openLuup... based on house mode.

IPCam
Safari Mac Rule Sets Menu after upgrade build 21275

S

I can no longer access the Rule Sets menu after upgrading to build 21275. Nothing happens when I click on Rule Sets. Other menu options work fine. I have cleared history, hard refreshed the browser, Rebooted. Works fine in Firefox and google chrome. I have always used Safari.
Suggestions?

Safari for Mac version 15.0
MSR Version 21275-df3d784
Synology Docker

Multi-System Reactor