New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Posted on
Thu Mar 24, 2016 12:18 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Yeah, well, it isn't exactly new - I've been using it in my own house for three years now. I didn't publish it because this is fairly strongly geared towards my specific house needs. I'm pretty sure the only person anywhere who can use all of its devices is me. Still, my house wouldn't work nearly as well without this plugin, so I finally decided to clean it up and publish it. You're welcome.

So what can it do? It really is a grab-bag (or, as I prefer, a Smorgasbord :-)) of functionality:

  • A device that lets you easily create sensor zones that switch a relay device on and (timed) off, with enough brains to deal with real-life situations such as "turn the light off and keep it off while you leave." Operation can be suppressed by an Indigo variable. Comes with an action to tie in programmed sensor triggers. And stuff.
  • Devices that link an INSTEON KeypadLinc button to any Indigo device or variable in both directions. You just create one link device, and presto! the button light tracks the device state and the button changes it. If you have KeypadLincs, this is huge. If you don't, it's useless. :-)
  • A classic garage door control device that takes a door sensor and a dry contact wired to your garage door button and turns them into a standard Indigo relay device smart enough to get the 99% case right. Lets you say "close the garage door" and have it do the right thing. And it's smart enough to recognize when it's confused.
  • A device that automatically watches all your INSTEON leak sensors and makes it easy to trigger alarms when things go wrong. And get quiet notifications when they don't report in regularly. It's all inside one device.
  • A device that automatically watches all devices with battery state and tells you which ones are low (and how low).
  • A few more odds and ends.
The idea is that you use what fits your needs and ignore the rest. Let me know if you find any of it useful.

As always, documentation can be found inside the plugin or separately on the web at http://www.cynic.org/indigo/plugins/online/behaviors.html.

Enjoy
-- perry

Posted on
Thu Mar 24, 2016 6:51 am
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Thank you very much for this plug-in Perry. I see a couple of things on the list of capabilities that will be useful in my home.

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Thu Mar 24, 2016 7:10 am
norcoscia offline
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Joined: Sep 09, 2015

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

jalves wrote:
Thank you very much for this plug-in Perry. I see a couple of things on the list of capabilities that will be useful in my home.


I agree 100%, I'm getting ready to add KeypadLincs so this will really help and (I think) I can use the zone feature for my garage light / motion sensors. Your plug-ins make my HA setup so much more useful - thanks so much for all of your work with them. BTW, w/o your network plug-in I could not control my blinds....

Norm

_______
Norm

Posted on
Thu Mar 24, 2016 10:12 am
jay (support) offline
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Location: Austin, Texas

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Nice plugin, thanks for another great one Perry!

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Fri Mar 25, 2016 3:16 am
haavarda offline
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Posts: 702
Joined: Aug 18, 2012
Location: Norway

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Hi Perry. Nice plugin, and I am looking forward to play with it.
A couple of things I have been thinking about regarding the garage setup.

1
Could it be possible to add another sensor position? "Fully open" maybe?

2
If I set a plug in switch at the power supply to the door opener, it would be possible to detect if the opener is in fact running. By detecting the power consumption of the door. Maybe even detect open vs close, as a assume the consumption is bigger during opening. Could this be useful? http://aeotec.com/z-wave-plug-in-switch

3
I have photoelectric sensor with a dry output that is integrated with indigo. Could this be incorporated with your logic?

And maybe a request or suggestion. Could this plugin be the perfect place for a "motion sensor / light" setup?

Thanks again for your work on this, and the other plugins?

Håvard

Posted on
Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:33 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

haavarda wrote:
Hi Perry. Nice plugin, and I am looking forward to play with it.
A couple of things I have been thinking about regarding the garage setup.

1
Could it be possible to add another sensor position? "Fully open" maybe?

I considered it. It would improve the resilience of the model, but not by that much - the device still wouldn't know what's going on in between those end positions. In the end I decided that the existing one-sensor solution works well enough for me. I did a major rewrite of the code after some pithy bug reports from my wife. That device has a surprisingly large amount of brain in it, given its seemingly simple function.
2
If I set a plug in switch at the power supply to the door opener, it would be possible to detect if the opener is in fact running. By detecting the power consumption of the door. Maybe even detect open vs close, as a assume the consumption is bigger during opening. Could this be useful? http://aeotec.com/z-wave-plug-in-switch

It could, but it would require further tuning and trimming and measuring. Here's the deal: the more sensors you put into a solution, the closer your world simulation can be; but the more ways it has to go wrong. I've come around, over the years, towards making the minimum-complexity solution that seems to do the job.

And yes, I've had all those dreams of the perfect hardware solution too, including installing a camera and using picture analysis to completely supervise the door. :-)
3
I have photoelectric sensor with a dry output that is integrated with indigo. Could this be incorporated with your logic?

The device will accept any relay that can "press" the garage door button and any sensor that can report "closed or not" that's understood by Indigo. My "button presser" happens to be an iTach relay, and the sensor is a simple INSTEON door sensor. But any kind of device should be able to play.

And maybe a request or suggestion. Could this plugin be the perfect place for a "motion sensor / light" setup?

I don't know what you mean here.

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Fri Mar 25, 2016 11:03 am
haavarda offline
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Posts: 702
Joined: Aug 18, 2012
Location: Norway

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Hi Perry. You are right, those were my visions

I am on travel now, but will give it a go when I get home, I am sure it is well thought through. And I think you are correct about simplicity. A system should be as simple as possible, but not simpler .

As for my last point. That was just a hope that you could look at implementing a "smart light" device that can be used with a dimmer and a motion sensor to trigger different light settings at different times. I sort of have this running now, but it takes a lot of triggers and is difficult to fault find...

Just my thoughts...

Håvard

Posted on
Sat Mar 26, 2016 6:09 am
haavarda offline
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Posts: 702
Joined: Aug 18, 2012
Location: Norway

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Hi again Perry.
I just installed the plugin, and made an observation. I use a Fibaro relay to control my garage door. This relay has an auto off function that is controlled independently of indigo. In that way I ensures that the relay is not stuck ON if something fails. How will this work with your plugin, as the setting for the toggle is not relevant?


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Håvard

Posted on
Sat Mar 26, 2016 7:54 am
maslett offline
Posts: 95
Joined: Aug 09, 2014

Control 3 Way Scene KPL button LED's

Perry,

Thank you for the plugin. It looks like its going to be very useful.

I use several 6 button KPLs to control individual lights and scenes of lights - in essence each KPL button acts as a virtual 3 way switch for a light or scene of lights.

You are right it is very very tedious to have to set up the LED buttons on each KPL and even more so when you have multiple interconnected KPL's acting as three way light or scene controllers.

Obviously its easy NOW, using the plugin, to sync the button LED state with the device state for an individual light but is there a way I can use the plugin's to control the scene button LEDs the same way?

Many thanks, in advance.

Mark

Posted on
Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:48 pm
dnomode offline
Posts: 366
Joined: Apr 12, 2008
Location: North Georgia

New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Hello Perry,

This looks very cool, thanks. I currently use an I/O link to push the button on my garage door and also monitor it's opened or closed state. I want to play with your plugin using the I/O Link. However, for the toggle button i'm only getting an Insteon appliance link and an insteon ON/OFF switch showing up on my drop down list. Is that correct?

Edmond


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Last edited by dnomode on Sat Mar 26, 2016 9:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Posted on
Sat Mar 26, 2016 4:19 pm
ELWOOD offline
Posts: 225
Joined: Feb 11, 2007
Location: Ramsey, NJ

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

Hi Perry

I am also hoping to use your new plugin to control my garage door. I track its open/close using Richard's AD2USB plug in (as an alarm zone)
For the relay I was hopping to use an EZIO 2X4 mod, but under the toggle button device none of my EZIO show up. Under open sensor the
only device I see is a insteon wireless motion detector. Is it possible to work with my setup.

Thanks for sharing this new plugin and all your other plugin's that I use.


Elwood

Posted on
Sun Mar 27, 2016 1:55 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

haavarda wrote:
Hi again Perry.
I just installed the plugin, and made an observation. I use a Fibaro relay to control my garage door. This relay has an auto off function that is controlled independently of indigo. In that way I ensures that the relay is not stuck ON if something fails. How will this work with your plugin, as the setting for the toggle is not relevant?

The auto-off shouldn't interfere with the device operation. The plugin will still send an "off" command to the relay, so it'll be doubly-sure off. I don't think that's a problem.

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:10 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: Control 3 Way Scene KPL button LED's

maslett wrote:
Perry,

Thank you for the plugin. It looks like its going to be very useful.

I use several 6 button KPLs to control individual lights and scenes of lights - in essence each KPL button acts as a virtual 3 way switch for a light or scene of lights.

You are right it is very very tedious to have to set up the LED buttons on each KPL and even more so when you have multiple interconnected KPL's acting as three way light or scene controllers.

Obviously its easy NOW, using the plugin, to sync the button LED state with the device state for an individual light but is there a way I can use the plugin's to control the scene button LEDs the same way?

It depends a bit on what you mean by "scene."

You can link two different KeypadLinc buttons to the same device, using two separate INSTEON Device Control devices. Then either button will control the device, and both button lights will track the device state. If that's what you mean by "scene", it's trivial. (I have buttons for the great room lights in three places using this trick.)

If by "scene" you mean INSTEON controller scenes, then no, this plugin doesn't do that. I don't think those scenes have a "state" that can set the button light, and the plugin is all about that two-way association of a button with something else.

Keep in mind that the KeypadLinc Button Device Control device can link to any Indigo relay device. If you create an Indigo Device Group, then it can link that to a KeypadLinc button.

Or do you mean something else by "scene"?

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:19 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

dnomode wrote:
Hello Perry,

This looks very cool, thanks. I currently use an I/O link to push the button on my garage door and also monitor it's opened or closed state. I want to play with your plugin using the I/O Link. However, for the toggle button i'm only getting an Insteon appliance link and an insteon ON/OFF switch showing up on my drop down list. Is that correct?

My device specifies "any Indigo relay" for its Toggle Button and "any indigo sensor" for its Open Sensor - it uses the standard Indigo device filters. What kind of device does the I/O link say it is and how do you control it?

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:23 am
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: New Plugin: Cynical Behaviors

ELWOOD wrote:
Hi Perry

I am also hoping to use your new plugin to control my garage door. I track its open/close using Richard's AD2USB plug in (as an alarm zone)
For the relay I was hopping to use an EZIO 2X4 mod, but under the toggle button device none of my EZIO show up. Under open sensor the
only device I see is a insteon wireless motion detector. Is it possible to work with my setup.

Thanks for sharing this new plugin and all your other plugin's that I use.

My device specifies "any Indigo relay" for its Toggle Button and "any indigo sensor" for its Open Sensor - it uses the standard Indigo device filters. What kind of device does your EZIO say it is, if it's not a relay?

One approach would be to create an Indigo Virtual On/Off Device (with action groups that tell your EZIO to Do The Right Thing) and use that as the Toggle Button device. That should work (I haven't tried it; I don't use any EZIOs anymore).

Cheers
-- perry

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