I think I solved this with a completely different approach. Instead of using variables based on Last Seen, I am just checking the current state of the sensor and used the Restriction that the sensor must be FALSE (ie door closed) for 120 seconds. Not sure why I did not try this the first time.

Since my Reaction is now working, I should probably close this out as Solved. However, I am still interested in how to use a variable as described in the original post in case I need to use a similar approach in the future. Hopefully someone can provide some guidance (thanks realdb!) on how to use the variables. If I don't hear back within a few days, I will go ahead and update this as Solved.

@therealdb Thanks for your feedback!

I have not used a metadata statement like this before so have a follow up. I think I have the proper data elements. But is this statement supposed to be part of the Expression definition or the Reaction Trigger? The screenshot below shows what I tried creating the expression.

Sorry for the lack of understanding on my part! Is the goal to have the variable itself be true/false? Or is the goal to have the variable still provide a numeric result that is used in the reaction? I may just need a little more direction.

Thanks again!

I am trying to run a reaction that turns on lights if a sensor has not been tripped for 2 minutes. Basically, when a garage door is open, turn on inside lights if nothing has been sensed for 2 minutes. My question has to do with the expression/variable for "Last Seen". The variable never gets updated over time since the last seen event never changes.

In the screenshot above, the reaction checks for any garage door as well as the variable called "GarageLastEntry". The expression for this variable is displayed below:

The problem that I am experiencing is that the variable never changes over time. I understand that this is because the "last seen" variable does not change over time when there is no activity. In this screenshot, the value shows 0.029... This can also be seen as the current value in the original reaction screenshot above. After 10 minutes, this value should be 10. However, when a garage door is opened, the variable does not get updated and thus the rule does not become true since .029 is less than 2.

When I go to the variable and click on the > icon, the variable then gets updated as expected as seen below:

So the ultimate question is, how do I use a rule that can use a variable such as "last seen"? Do I need to create another variable or reaction that multiplies this by 1 every minute? From what I read in the manual, a variable is evaluated every time it is included in a reaction. But this is not what I am seeing.

I also want to ask another question related to this variable. It seems like Reactor continuously deletes this variable and I have to keep recreating it? I have never experienced this with MSR so wanted to ask if this is a common problem or if my definition is causing this.

Any info is appreciated!!!

I updated to the latest build and this solved all of my issues. Thanks for the suggestions! I will try to stay up to date on the latest stable builds from here on.

I am running MSR on a small windows machine. Earlier this week, the machine restarted and Reactor restarted as well. I am now experiencing an issue in which Reactor doesn't seem to be making any updates or calling any scenes. Reactor is communicating with Vera and all entities seem to be accurate (ie lights on or off) and manually clicking on Actions seems to work just fine. The Status page also seems accurate and displays rules automatically being SET and RESET. But when the Reaction changes from SET to RESET or vice versa, none of the actions are actually invoked.

For example, I manually ran a SET action at 11:29 and my lights turned on. At 11:30, the Status Dashboard shows the rule updating to RESET, but the lights did not turn off.

I have included a screenshot of the rule history below as well as the log for these times as well.

Any ideas on what can be going on? I have tried restarting the Windows machine as well as Reactor multiple times to see if this fixes this behavior but have not had any success. Any information is appreciated.

[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:39.161Z VeraController:null VeraController#vera enqueued task for Entity#vera>scene_3 action script.run: task [Object]{ "SceneNum": "3", "DeviceNum": 0, "id": "action", "serviceId": "urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1", "action": "RunScene" }
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:39.587Z VeraController:INFO VeraController#vera 0 dead entities older than 86400000s purged
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.763Z Rule:NOTICE Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) configuration changed; reloading
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.766Z Rule:NOTICE Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) stopping
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.772Z Rule:NOTICE Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) stopped
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.773Z Rule:NOTICE Rule#rule-la4gnzmt (Evening Lights Rule) starting
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.777Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) starting evaluation; because startup
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.779Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) evaluated; rule state transition from RESET to SET!
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.802Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) evaluation complete
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.809Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) started
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.811Z Engine:INFO Enqueueing "Evening Lights Rule<SET>" (rule-la4gnzmt:S)
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.840Z Engine:NOTICE Starting reaction Evening Lights Rule<SET> (rule-la4gnzmt:S)
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:29:45.842Z Engine:INFO Evening Lights Rule<SET> all actions completed.
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.008Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) starting evaluation; because timer-trigger Timer#rule-la4gnzmt
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.024Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) evaluated; rule state transition from SET to RESET!
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.055Z Rule:INFO Evening Lights Rule (Rule#rule-la4gnzmt) evaluation complete
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.062Z Engine:INFO Enqueueing "Evening Lights Rule<RESET>" (rule-la4gnzmt:R)
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.079Z Engine:NOTICE Starting reaction Evening Lights Rule<RESET> (rule-la4gnzmt:R)
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:00.080Z Engine:INFO Evening Lights Rule<RESET> all actions completed.
[stable-22274]2023-04-14T03:30:01.099Z VeraController:INFO VeraController#vera 0 dead entities older than 86400000s purged

MSR has a parameter called "http_request_action_maxresponse" that can be updated within the properties. There is a good section describing this in the manual. However, the installation config file doesn't include the parameter out of the box. I was able to add the parameter (see below) and eventually got it to work after searching for a while.

Suggestions:

1. Include the parameter in the initial config file (or)
2. Update the manual to state that the parameter should be added to the file

Additional suggestion:
I understand that it is potentially unsafe to have a large limit overall. However, some API calls unfortunately return large sizes which aren't necessarily problematic. The additional suggestion is to include a configurable max size within each HTTP Reaction in the UI. If it isn't populated then MSR could default to the config file like it does today. This way, we could have a reasonable default limit while allowing larger limit for certain HTTP calls.

  engine:
    #
    # enabled - Whether or not the rules engine runs. Change only when directed.
    enabled: true
    http_request_action_maxresponse: 10000