Virtual device improvements

Posted on
Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:10 pm
forestfield offline
Posts: 83
Joined: Dec 29, 2014
Location: West Sussex

Virtual device improvements

Hi - finally upgraded to indigo 7, and I've a couple of suggestions for improvements

1. It would be helpful if the 'show dependencies' menu item for devices also showed any virtual groups that the device is in, as well as triggers, control pages etc.

2. Nested virtual devices! For each room I have a virtual device that contains all the lights in that room. I can then have 'all lights off/on' buttons on the control page for that room. I would like to create an 'all lights' virtual group that then contains all the room's 'all lights' virtual groups, so I then have a master 'all lights off/on' action. At the moment I have to manually add any new lights to the 'all lights' virtual group; or use a script. Nesting seems somehow a better/more maintainable solution!

Obviously neither of these are high priorities.

-- Paul --

Posted on
Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:23 pm
jay (support) offline
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Posts: 18199
Joined: Mar 19, 2008
Location: Austin, Texas

Re: Virtual device improvements

Thanks for the feedback. #1 is going to require significant work since the Indigo server doesn't currently know about dependencies that are encapsulated in plugin defined objects and the virtual devices interface is just a special plugin. We do want to tackle it, but it's actually a pretty large task and has far-reaching consequences.

#2 is also a bit of a large task, because if you allow nested virtual device groups you then have to make sure that there is no circular logic (group A turns on a device, group B turns off a device, you include them in each other and you potentially get a loop - it's even more complex really, that's just a simplification). So, while it's possible to detect circular logic, it's not a trivial exercise. As it is, the device group type in fact tries to do too much I think (in retrospect). If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have taken a different approach. C'est la vie.

At some point we'll circle back to this device type and give it a good rethink but that's definitely down the road.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:41 pm
forestfield offline
Posts: 83
Joined: Dec 29, 2014
Location: West Sussex

Re: Virtual device improvements

Thanks Jay,
I was naively thinking they would be easy! C'est la vie indeed .

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