SmartHome Community

a-lurker

Mmmmm - interesting - I've had a very similar experience with a couple of Veras. One of the Veras; I recently turned off the WiFi and I have never heard from it since; even though it has always successfully conversed via a hardwired LAN interface for years.

akbooer I recommend you ditch the Edge - it's costing you money at about 0.24 kW hrs per day. Further still, I recommend you use openLuup. It works well and the developer? - don't stuff around. Please donate as he or she requests.

a-lurker

@akbooer said in Sun position or light sensor for blinds?:

Yes, it's all been done. You need @futzle's Heliotrope plugin.

Out of interest; I've modified/updated and re released Futzle's Heliotrope plugin in the AltApp store (with Futzle's permission).

Likewise; I've modified/updated and re released Chris Jackson's EDS one wire server plugin in the AltApp store (with Chris's permission).

a-lurker

The plugins listed here are available via the Alternative App Store. The app store becomes accessible via a new menu item in the Alternative User Interface once configured.

Both the Alternative User Interface (AltUI) and AltAppStore (AltAppStore) plugins need to be installed on Vera to access the store. With openLuup; this is all "automatically" set up and ready to go as part of the openLuup suite.

The Alternative App Store can be found here.

Publishing a plugin in the store is pretty easy. First your plugin code must be available in GitHub. Publish it, using the Publish command in the AltAppStore web page. You need to enter the salient information and it's ready to go.

Plugin icons can be stored on GitHub eg like so. After a "few days" the raw json describing the plugin appears here.

Vera 3 users should note the store will not work, as Vera 3 doesn't have the https capability required to access GitHub. However, the apps can always be downloaded from GitHub and manually installed.

For those just interested in what the store contains; refer to the list below - as of 2021 July 27 there were about 75 plugins available:

Plugin	Comments
ABC:
Aeratron fans
Alternative App Store	Built into openLuup
ALTHue
ALTUI
Amcrest Dahua
AutoVirtualThermostat
BroadLink-Mk2
Canal Plus	Not in GitHub
Countdown Timer	Originated by Futzle
DEF:
DALI Planet
DarkSky Weather	Service is rumoured to be closing in late 2021. The "Multi Provider Weather Station" plugin can potentially be used as a replacement.
DataYours
DelayLight
DeusExMachinaII
Domoticz Bridge	Non functional: needs work check here
Domoticz Bridge 2	Originated by 999LV and updated by perhusaas
DreamColorESP8266
DreamColorLedRGB
Ecobee
Edisio Gateway
EDS One Wire Server	Originated by Chris Jackson
EKM metering
Emby Interface
Enphase Envoy Solar Monitor
EventWatcher
Ezlo Bridge
FritzBox Sensor
GHI:
Google Calendar 3
Harmony Hub Control
Heliotrope	Originated by Futzle. openLuup incorporates the same functionality, so this plugin is not required in that casse.
Homebridge 2 openLuup
HomeWave Push
HundredGraphs Logger
IKEA Tradfri
Image Map Remote
Info Viewer	For Vera only
IPhone Locator
IPX800
Irrigation Caddy
JKL:
KSenia Lares 16 Bridge
LuaView
MNO:
Multi Provider Weather Station
Netatmo
Network Monitor
OpenSprinkler
OpenTherm Gateway
openWeather
PQRS:
Paradox EVO IP150 web page scrapper
Pioneer Receiver
Rachio
Rainforest Eagle	Based on robertmm's work
RaZberry (ALPHA)
Reactor
RGB Controller
Rules Engine
SiteSensor
SMA inverter
Smartmeter Reader
Solar Meter
Sonos	Originated by lolomodo and updated by toggledbits.
Sony Bravia IP
Surveillance Station Remote (BETA)
Switchboard
TUV:
Telegram
Tesla Car
UPS Sensor
UPnP Event Proxy	OpenWRT only - originated by Futzle
VeraAlexa
Virtual HTTP Devices	MQTT commands & status are only available with openLuup. http & Lua can be used by Vera and openLuup.
Virtual Pronto Remote
Virtual Sensor
VW CarNet
WXYZ:
WES
Xee
Yamaha RX HTTP
Z-Way
ZiBlue Gateway
ZiGate Gateway

a-lurker

openweathermap looks good. You could probably get the DarkSky plugin to do both. They even have a mapping table already available:

OpenWeather to DarkSky mapping

a-lurker

A plus for Telegram. Just a line like this will do it:

luup.inet.wget('https://api.telegram.org/bot'..botID..'/sendMessage?chat_id='..chatID..'&text='..urlEncode(msg),5)

a-lurker

Just tell him/her, I'm going to subscribe to this site using his or her users name if he/her isn't quick

a-lurker

In 2017, bought a "Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum Cleaner Laser Distance Sensor NIDEC Brushless Motor, MPN: SDJQR01RR". Need to lift the smaller obstacles off the floor so it gets a good go at the floor and it can get stuck under some furniture. We have a mix of hard floor and carpet and it gets cleaned really well. Based on its work, it paid for itself very quickly. It maps the house with LIDAR and sends the map of my house back to China - no doubt there is some good data mining to be had in thousands of house plans!!! It vacuums in lines, up & down, rather than just bumping around randomly, like some of the older vacs do. Takes a while but that's only because it does a good job.

a-lurker

"akbooer: Master Branch: 2021 Release 7.25
Long-overdue roll-up of the last year's development updates!"

ak - congratulations on some great improvements coming to fruition. I can only hope you aren't running out of ideas! It's not easy.

I'd still like to see an "App Store" plugin download count but the invisible hands still need to be invoked by someone - whoever that may be!!

a-lurker

I few things that would help:
Some report of what went wrong: whether that be a log output or code test window output. Otherwise it's unlikely your code (IMHO) will be looked at by forum members.
General readability: All variables should be declared, if at all possible, at the start before all the functions are declared. Declaring global variables inside a function is not good eg huelights. Declare them local at the start. It's important to decide if your functions should be local or global. In most cases they should be local. The master code that gets everything going should also be in a function called startup() or initialise() or similar. Then have a look at what the api call returns.

a-lurker

Well, I disappeared down a rabbit hole on a different mission and resurfaced with this monstrosity.

What does it do?

It translates button functions for various (certainly not all) IRP protocols to Pronto codes. These can then be sent by a plugin that sends Pronto Codes to IR transmitters - such as the BroadLink Plugin or the GC100 Plugin (or similar).

The IRP protocol "Device", "Subdevice" and "Function" numbers are stored in a json file as buttons for "virtual remotes".

So you could have say three physical IR transmitters and want to command different AV devices (ie TVs, AVR, Xmas tree, etc) in the vicinity of those various IR emitters.

The button codes are far less cumbersome than heaps of pronto codes. You can set up a virtual remote for each AV device in the json file. Each physical emitter can be assigned to any virtual remote. And away you go!

Well - you already have a pile of pronto codes already running just fine? However, as the plugin "manufacturers" pronto codes, you could also use it to scan/search for functions for any AV device you may have. GitHub has an example for Pioneer: SearchForButtonCodes.lua

Read about the IRP protocol

Find "Device", "Subdevice" and "Function" codes:

IR database

Plugin details in:

GitHub

Install via AltUI:

Plugins available via AltUI

Version 0.51
Initial release.

Version 0.52
Add RC6 format: includes Windows Media Center based items eg Intel NUCs, Xboxes, Kodi, etc

a-lurker

All a bit tricky. The OpenZWave people spent ages reverse engineering the protocol. The logViewer plugin I wrote - it's for Vera/OpenWRT only - was subsequently augmented by @gengen. Putting the logging into verbose mode invokes his "ZShark". It allows a good view of the ZWave interchanges. Definitely don't leave your Vera in the logging verbose mode fo any length of time.

a-lurker

Not sure why, but after many years, I'm still unsure how plugins with children are meant to be coded, although I've got away with doing a few with no problems!

I could try out a few test cases but messing around with luup.chdev.append() is tricky. If the appended info changes, a luup.engine restart occurs. Any stuff ups and this can go into a continuous loop. Plus I don't want random new devices scattered all over my installation.

So imagine a plugin that controls say ten binary lights, ten dimmers and ten blinds/shutters:

the plugin should have in the device file D_xyx.xml the tag:

OK it makes sense for the parent to have the routines to control the child devices.

Question: when wouldn't the plugin parent not have the code to control its children? ie

Seems redundant or I have misunderstood something?

The service files for both dimmers and blinds have the function:

<action>
      <name>SetLoadLevelTarget</name>
      <argumentList>
        <argument>
          <name>newLoadlevelTarget</name>
          <direction>in</direction>
          <relatedStateVariable>LoadLevelTarget</relatedStateVariable>
        </argument>
      </argumentList>
</action>

And to call the action in each case, we have say 'dimmingLevel' vs 'blindPosition':

luup.call_action('urn:upnp-org:serviceId:Dimming1', "SetLoadLevelTarget", {newLoadlevelTarget = dimmingLevel}, deviceId)

luup.call_action('urn:upnp-org:serviceId:Dimming1', "SetLoadLevelTarget", {newLoadlevelTarget = blindPosition}, deviceId)

Question: how do you direct the same calls to different functions in the plugin - one to dim the light and the other to postion the blind? It would seem that you would have to look at the target child device and see what type it is, then act accordingly? An example would be good!

In this plugin, devices can come and go - not often - but still needs to be attended to in the code. So the luup.chdev.append() call is executed at every start up. Each child has a descriptive name. When the child is first created this name can be set up by the software to say "Light 1" to "light 10". The user can then subsequently change this descriptive name.

Question: How do I know that this descriptive name has been changed by the user and needs to be preserved and how do I check what this descriptive name is ready for when the luup.chdev.append() call is executed? As the function needs this descriptive name.

And I wonder how openluup (without looking at the code) emulates the C blob:

local childDevices = luup.chdev.start(THIS_LUL_DEVICE)

a-lurker

If you have some input method such as a scene controller or anything you can set up to send openLuup commands then this plugin can create Pronto codes on the fly for most IR formats and then direct them to anything (slave plugins) that can output an IR signal - such as the Global Cache or Broadlink stuff. There's a Keene plugin that could also probably be modified to accept pronto codes.

a-lurker

Yes - I'll look at this again but I was hoping to avoid having to distribute another file. I can see why togglebits choose node.js for his work on MSR. It makes the comms between devices seem almost trivial.

a-lurker

@akbooer said in io module async ?:

The I/O module design of Vera is famously bad, and indeed obscure in some of its functionality.

Totally agree with the above.

Currently I'm looking at a project that you may be able to provide some guidance on? It looks like so:

All TX and RX messages are lines of text with a cr/lf on the end - via an IP TCP connection
I want to send one line commands, that can result in an immediate single or multi-line response. The response has nothing to indicate how many lines are in or will be in the reply. There is no symbol that represents end of message. However each line in the response has a prefix, which can help with response data assembly and dissection.
Interspersed may be asynchronous event messages. When I say interspersed; not inside multi-line responses to commands but after a command response is completed but asynchronously thereafter. These events have a unique prefix, so they can be identified.

In general, don't want any I/O blocking on reads to occur but blocking while waiting for a command response would probably be OK.

As I understand I/O blocking on reads in Vera/openLuup results in everything coming to grinding halt up to the timeout period - assuming the read does timeout. I may have that wrong - not clear on this.

After a command & response pair, I assume you would use something like socket.select. Also should I be making use of "jobs"?

I've written a few plugins with comms but every time I do, I seem to need a different approach. In particular asynchronous incoming data seems a bit tricky. But I do want abandon the use of the Vera method!

Interested in any suggestions or comments.

a-lurker

Have you got any sort of IR transmitter available to your Vera or openLuup? Can you get any pronto codes out of the Logitech with some learning device?

One of the problems with RC5 is that it has a toggle bit, which means every second time a button is pushed the code changes.

a-lurker

"Cyrus Streamer' - pretty esoteric but it looks like it uses the RC5 protocol. Similar to Marantz. Have you got any Pronto codes that you can post here for the Cyrus like Power On, Power Off, Mute (actual model number may be of use too). I could probably work out what's what from the pronto codes. I use a BroadLink IR transmitter and and a Z-Wave scene controller ie it has buttons that trigger IR macros, turns power on and off to various devices, select inputs via http on the amp, etc. I suppose it depends on how many buttons you actually need to run your gear and what you are trying to achieve?

a-lurker

Mmmm - nobody likes a dead database. Fortunately the codes are all here in GitHub.

a-lurker

How about a Virtual Pronto remote? If you can list out your devices - could probably work out if it can do the job.

a-lurker

Yep - should do. Although you did not mention what sort of Vera. And if using a Vera you certainly would be using AltUI with it.

Odd behavior in HA

openLuup: Shelly Bridge plugin

Ordering of global expressions

Reactor not starting on latest 21294

Reactor: double click action

Fibaro Wall plug power metering

Luup reload required after server reboot

Suppressing alerts

Jungle telegraph - MQTT coming to MSR?

Using `format()` to build notification and other strings

Sorting arrays

Reactor (Multi-System/Multi-Hub) Announcements

Backing / Restoring MSR Rule Sets and Configuration

"kinda smart" switch to put behind a normal light switch

How to? Rule for Vera "Can't Detect Device" errors and reset

Added IP camera to Ezlo, what is causing this

Hubitat primary attribute

Date and time issue

Fun Stuff

Reactor log timestamps

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