Change in Plans (Don't Panic)

[toggledbits]

Everyone, I've had a change in thinking.

As many of you know, I had decided to not build an MSR interface for eZLO's new controllers, for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that I had chosen not to use an eZLO hub in my future HA. I am currently straddling three hubs: Vera, Home Assistant, and Hubitat. I am actually very much enjoying the flexibility this has provided. But these three hubs are enough for the moment, and when the venerable Vera Plus on which my house has operated since 2017 dies, I will likely just move the rest of my ZWave devices to the other hubs and reduce by one.

Another reason for my previous decision was the risk of fluidity/instability in the eZLO APIs. Since this is first generation work, and even now as they approach the three-year mark on development and are still in "beta" with much functionality still incomplete or missing altogether (plugin UI framework?... anyone? anyone?), it stands to reason that, like all projects in this phase in particular, choices are made that need to be revisited. To be fair, Hass and Hubitat are not immune from this either, even as much more mature products with greater market penetration. In any case, I've demurred because of the high perceived risk of change and breakage, and didn't want to put myself (again) on the critical path of my own user base waiting for me to catch up. I accept now, however, that events like this are just part and parcel of the environment in which I've chosen to work. As I said, if it's not eZLO changing something, it's going to be Hass, or something else. I haven't had a breaking change hit from the Hubitat side yet, but it's probably just a matter of time. Just as I seek to improve my work, they must seek to improve theirs.

The upshot is that I've decided to write an eZLO interface, and I've been working on that for a few days and now have a working prototype running. It works with the few devices I have available for it, and there's a lot that's assumed and untested about all the others. Think back to March, when MSR was first released -- the process of going through and stabilizing these interfaces under all the different external conditions, with devices in your environments that I don't, and sometimes cannot, have -- it takes time. Drilling out all of the details of device behaviors and data, and how each hub handles them differently, takes time. But it's going to be a reality. Aside from this, reading the other forums makes me realize just how much this is needed, if only because there appears as yet to be no articulated concrete plan (e.g. words beyond a promise with no date) to support easy migration from a Vera to an eZLO. MSR touts itself as a tool to assist such migrations between hubs. An eZLO interface must exist.

To set expectations: you'll see the first version of this interface in a build in the next couple of weeks. It will be an add-in. Like MSR itself, I will be limiting the initial audience, and those of you that participate in the early use and testing will be asked to provide lots of diagnostics and feedback (so please don't ask/participate if you're not willing and able to put in the time). It's brand new, unfinished work; there will be lots of bugs, and lots of holes, and it's going to take a lot to get them all squashed and filled, respectively.

Based on what I've learned so far from this project, I also want to forewarn you that it may include access to my cloud infrastructure for automatic logging (to make our mutual efforts to examine problems easier and faster), at least during the early stages. At the moment, MSR has no hard Internet-access dependencies, so this is a change for this interface work.

Also, I probably will ultimately be charging a modest monthly or annual subscription for the eZLO interface, which is a change from policy and practice to date. The amount of effort the project has demanded and can demand in future makes it necessary that I consider a business model. I know that gives some pause, but it should also give you confidence that I am thinking of a long-term future. But, those of you who, as of this writing, hold active accounts on the MSR bug tracker and have participated so valuably in the testing and improvement of MSR, are grand-fathered in to a perpetual (personal/non-commercial use) license to MSR and this interface (no fees, at least for what parts are produced by my hand; I cannot control what others may choose to do if/when third party development takes root). I am considering extending that benefit to everyone who has donated to my projects from the start to date; that is, including those who supported Reactor for Vera, without which MSR would never had been born.

I can probably predict from these forums and others who the active eZLO users are going to be, but if you want to work with me on it, please let me know by reply here. I will be relying on you heavily, because I am not going to be a big consumer of the hub, so a lot of the work will require data collected from you and your hub and investigative work on that evidence, rather than first-hand experience and witnessed events in my own environment. But I'm confident it will work, as much gets done this way already, and investing in more and deeper troubleshooting tools is always a good investment.

Thanks to all of you who have supported this project. Onward...

[Pabla]

Looking forward to seeing the Ezlo version of MSR, I don't use the Ezlo hubs so I won't be able to contribute but with the addition of MSR it may make switching from my Vera Plus to an Ezlo controller a total possibility. I am sure MSR will become a staple for the platform just like how Reactor was in the Vera controllers. Good luck Patrick!!!

[Tom_D]

MSR has enabled me to explore Hubitat and I have been impressed with many features. Zigbee works much better and I have added devices that integrate well into my home control most of which is on VeraPlus. I am slowly moving to the VeraPlus just hosting the devices with most of the control through MR.
I pay for Altui and was thinking the other day I would not be opposed to a subscription plan for MSR as it is more valuable to me than Altui.
I was thinking about playing with Home Assistant but could pick up an ezlo plus controller if you are looking for guinea pigs. I could certainly give you the view of someone who just knows enough to be dangerous.
Thanks for all your work helping folks realize their home automation dreams.

[toggledbits]

@Pabla To be clear, MSR will not run on the eZLO hub, just as it does not run on Hubitat or Vera. MSR will always run on independent hardware (Hass can be an exception because you are in control of the host hardware). So if you're running MSR on Synology, RPI, or your favorite Linux or Windows host, it will interface with eZLO in exactly the same way that it does with Vera, Hass, and Hubitat.

[Pabla]

@toggledbits Ah yes that's what I mean't

[Matohl]

My Ezlo+ is collecting dust right now, my system has been more stable than ever with the HA-MSR-Vera system I'm running at the moment.

[cw-kid]

@toggledbits

I have an Ezlo Plus and an Ezlo Atom. On the Elzo Plus I have lots of devices on there, however most of them are emulated virtual devices mirrored from the "real" devices on my production Vera Plus, this was done using Rene's 3rd party Vera to Ezlo bridge plugin.

I do also have some real Z-Wave devices paired directly to the Ezlo Plus hub.

I would be happy to help test this new MSR interface and I am very happy to see you have decided to make it. This is a massive boost for Ezlo themselves in my opinion as they currently have no native logic rules engine of their own.

The "rule sets" in the beta Ezlo web GUI are basic and pretty much Vera scenes you would find in the Vera mobile app and only have a little improvement thus far, for example we now have basic AND / OR however in these scenes, which we never had on the Vera firmware hubs.

PM me if you want direct access to my Ezlo Plus controller happy for you to poke around and have a look at it.

[MikeReadington]

@toggledbits I bought 2 test controllers a while back, and I would be more than happy to help any way I can.

Do you have any idea what use case/device interaction scope would look like to give you the data you need?

I am pretty flexible over here...

[Crille]

@toggledbits I’m so thankful for the time and effort you put into MSR so the least I can do is give something back. I’d love to participate with my Ezlo Plus running about 20 zigbee devices in production, the logic is already in MSR so switching to a new interface would be easy for testing.

[toggledbits]

Thanks to all who have replied/volunteered. Variety of devices is key, so anything and everything is helpful. As you may have seen in these forums, even several months into fairly stable integrations for the other hubs, devices keep popping up with little exceptions or gaps in completion. More data is better is less. All of the interfaces drop files in the logs folder at the moment that I can use for fairly good diagnostics and forensics, so that theme will continue and get some embellishments for eZLO.

I expect the first wave of testing will just be "look and see"... do the devices come in as correct MSR entities, do they have their correct attributes, and are they correctly identified and, where appropriate, assigned sensible system capabilities (in addition to extension capabilities of the x_ezlo_etc variety). Startup configuration is also always a first-level challenge, and in this case, we'll have two different options: secured access (login through eZLO's cloud to get a local access token), and unsecured access (secured access can be disabled on the hub, eliminating the need for cloud login/token requests to get local access to the hub). Login + attributes will enable all of the rule/condition capabilities automatically. The second wave will follow immediately (as in with the next breath) to see that actions work and to what extent they need extension or repair, and that completes reactions. Things converged pretty quickly with the other three interfaces, so I'm hopeful this can be highly functional in short order.

[LibraSun]

I have a VeraPlus (daily driver), another VeraPlus (used/spare), an eZLO Atom 2.0 (unused), Vera Edge running the LInux f/w (unused), an eZLO Plus (beta testing / unused) and an old Vera 1 (connected / idle) divided among two different residences.

@toggledbits , surely others have made a similar offer by now, so I presume you are "set" for want of controllers -- but IF you require any of these for use in-house, just ask and I'll happily ship/donate.

Likewise, IF you need me to test some particular thing out from my side (Synology NAS > Docker > MSR > hub(s)), also just ask. Who knows, it might be the first/last thing I ever do with eZLO hardware, which otherwise is going in the trash at some point.

Glad you made this decision; I was concerned that you might inadvertently wind up with spare time on your hands. Oh, and THANK YOU for so thoughtfully grandfathering those who've toiled in the trenches alongside you lo these many weeks and months. For that you will not be sorry.

• Libra

[toggledbits]

@librasun I actually have a pretty big fist full of controllers myself. It's not really controllers I'm wanting for, it's devices and environments. The more hands this touches that aren't mine, the more things break, and the better things get for it. Hold on to them!

@librasun said in Change in Plans (Don't Panic):

Who knows, it might be the first/last thing I ever do with eZLO hardware, which otherwise is going in the trash at some point.

I absolutely doubt most users of the Atom or PlugHub would be a user of MSR (except in some fringe cases, like for an out-building). But those eZLO Plus's (in full or prototype/skeletal form) could be useful. They seem to have a similar architecture to the Raspberry Pi 4. Maybe once I get the ZWaveJS interface fleshed out (that's also been in the works), I can just publish an MSR replacement firmware for the Plus hardware. You know, for science.

[cw-kid]

@toggledbits said in Change in Plans (Don't Panic):

can just publish an MSR replacement firmware for the Plus hardware. You know, for science

So would it also act as a Z-Wave radio?

Or would you still need another second hub like Vera or the Ezlo or Hubitat etc, to act as the Z-Wave controller?

[toggledbits]

ZWaveJS would just talk to the on-board ZWave chip (via a serial/USB interface). Vera works the same way. So, yes, it would function as the ZWave radio in addition to being the rules engine.

[cw-kid]

@toggledbits

So an all in one controller then!

Might have to get my hands on another Ezlo Plus hub, so I can test both setups, native Ezlo or MSR with Z-Wave JS.

[therealdb]

@toggledbits said in Change in Plans (Don't Panic):

So, yes, it would function as the ZWave radio in addition to being the rules engine.

Looking forward to this, so I could add openluup to the mix and call it a day

[Elcid]

I have a plus, but not many devices on it. I use it for broad link as i could not get the broadlink2 plugin working on openloop. will to test though. Like the idea of Zwavejs, love science.

[Fanan]

I have as many before me, a Ezlo Plus laying around, and collecting dust. I've been waiting for a good reason to use it. When I got the Ezlo Plus, and I heard of the new Z-wave standard with better range I went really hopeful. Combined with MSR it looked like a winning concept. But the lack of stabilty, a working UI, and non-beta made me loose interest. If I can contribute in any way, I'd be honoured.

[toggledbits]

While I think a complete replacement firmware would be a fun exercise (and very possibly useful), we already have shown with openLuup and MSR that a Vera on its own is pretty stable in a reduced role as a ZWave radio and little else. So far my testing with the eZLO hub is yielding similar results, with the added benefit that it's demonstrably more stable when ZWave devices become unreachable (the Achilles Heel of current Vera firmware). I suspect we'll find that MSR running on a Pi, NAS, or other host against an eZLO hub still on its native firmware gives almost all of the benefits, without the need to replace the firmware on the hub itself. It will be fun to try it both ways, but I suspect that the simplest solution is going to be the best. And it will be here in a few days, where figuring out the firmware replacement will likely take a good bit more effort (and so is not really a goal, currently, just more of an experiment for a future weekend).

[wmarcolin]

Hi,

I have already commented on the other forum that my VeraPlus was saved from an incinerator or the tires of my car a few times, thanks to Reactor, and gained new life with MSR, so Patrick you know that you have in my person a collaborator (with limitations of technical knowledge), but a person who likes to explore and especially give suggestions that help users.

But, in my humble opinion, I will not make the mistake of buying an eZLO, I am seriously considering investing now in a Hubitat because I am tired of my VeraPlus being incompatible with any ZegBee or other devices with S2. The eZLO developers should follow the same line of not listening to the 3PP, the independent developers, and go back to repeating Vera's mistakes in my opinion.

This way I recognize your huge effort for the HA community, I am sure you have done a lot but in this new eZLO endeavor I will not be able to help, count me full on MSR for VeraPlus and Hubitat.