Meta Device Plugin 0.9.9

Posted on
Wed Feb 08, 2012 7:32 pm
berkinet offline
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Joined: Nov 18, 2008
Location: Berkeley, CA, USA & Mougins, France

Meta Device Plugin 0.9.9

This is an extremely simple, but none-the-less useful plugin. This plugin allows you to create relay and dimmer type devices which, when operated (on, off, toggle or set brightness) control either a Group/Scene or an Action. These devices can appear in the DEVICES UI, Control Pages, Indigo-Touch, etc. just the same as any real Indigo device (Like INSTEON or X10)

This allows you to give a "face" to a Group/Scene. For example, you can add a Group/Scene to a Control Page with no scripting. Just include the Pseudo Device on the page like any INSTEON or X10 device. The Pseudo Device will also appear in the standard Indigo IU and in Indigo-Touch as well. Also, since the "Dimmer" pseudo device really only controls an Action, with just a little scripting (AppleScript or Python) it can be used to control level sensitive applications, like audio volume, valve control, timer/duration settings, etc. One particularly nice use this plugin is to allow a control page widget to "toggle" between 2 Actions. Since the pseudo-device is just like any other Indigo device, it can be "toggled" as well.

If you choose to control a Group/Scene, then the only configuration choice is to enter the Group/Scene number. If you wish to control an Action Group, then you need to specify the Action Group for the On state and another Action Group for the Off state (Presumable the same Action Group could be used for both - but the value of doing so is not clear).

For dimmer device creation: A separate pulldown menu will appear allowing you to select the action to take when a brighten/dim event is received. This means you can have separate Actions for On/Off and Brighten/Dim. For Brightness level changes, the same Action Group event will be executed regardless of whether the brightness increases or decreases. If your Action needs to have the current brightness level, it will have to query the device in a script to get that information .
      In Python that would be something like:
      theBrightness = indigo.devices[155831086].states['brightnessLevel']

      And, in AppleScript:
      set theBrightness to the brightness of device "Meta Dimmer"

Caveats:
  • A Group/Scene must be assigned a name in order to be selected in the plugin.
  • This is beta! IWHFMW (It works here, for me, ware). Please report any problems to this topic or by PM.

The plugin is available on Dropbox.

Here are the release notes:
v 0.9.2 Feb 04, 2012
    Cleaned up messaging and error display.
    Modified Group/Scene menu to display scene names and numbers.
v 0.9.3 Feb 06, 2012
    Added "Do nothing" as an option.
v 0.9.4 Feb 17, 2012
    Added a Dimmer device type.
v 0.9.5 Feb 17, 2012
    Modified device dialog for dimmers to add separate action for brighten/dim.
    Now supports brighten/dim by %.
v 0.9.6 Feb 19, 2012
    Fixed a bug whith relay type devices being checked for a dimmer attribute.
v 0.9.7 August 9, 2012
    Added actions to set the onOffState of devices True or False.
v 0.9.8 August 12, 2012
    Fixed Dimmer bug in actionControlDimmerRelay.
    Added action dialog validation.
    Added action to set device brightness level.
    Many thanks to @nsheldon for these fixes and additions.
v 0.9.9 September 27, 2012
    Changed states from True/False to On/Off to work around iTouch control page state display bug

I am open to adding features, but would like to keep this plugin as simple as possible. In fact, this will probably be the final beta unless I hear some really cool idea.

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