Device type with 3 "states"

I'm working on an alarm system plugin and the panel/system has the concept of being armed (away), armed (home) and disarmed. I can expose the functionality for putting it into these states via actions, but it would be handy to expose this in a way so that it shows up in the device view in Indigo, much like you'd have Lock/Unlock on a lock device. I could show options for Turn On/Off, which in my case might be Arm Away and Disarm, but ideally I'd have a third button for the other Armed state. Is this possible?

Not as a standard device with controls in the Indigo Client UI. As you say, you could make it a relay device, but that only gives you two states. Any other standard Indigo device you used would be really confusing.

Also, while there's generally only three states you deliberately put the alarm system in, there are multiple other states it COULD be in. Like "Alarmed" or "Fault". You can make those the Status of the alarm device. So you have to do the work to make them show up there.

Thanks for confirming - that was what it was looking like but I wanted to make sure. I completely agree that trying to force it into some other device type is going to be more confusing than anything else - I have it setup as a custom device now so I'll keep going with that.

Absolutely, there are multiple states that could be displayed for the system, zones or individual sensors. The "state" label is a bit confusing given the meaning of states in Indigo. I suppose more accurately what I was hoping for was a way to get standard controls in the UI that would let me kick off three different actions (away/home/disarm) instead of on/off. Not a problem, I have it working using actions now so I'll keep it that way. Thanks again!

If you want, take a look at the Device definitions in the Concord4 Alarm System plugin, which I rewrote to handle device states better.

http://www.indigodomo.com/pluginstore/184/

I did my own custom alarm system with Indigo and Z-Wave. I use a variable to store the “state” of my alarm system:
Disarmed
ArmingAway
ArmingPartial
ArmingHome
ArmedAway
ArmedPartial
ArmedHome
EnteyDelay
Alarming
Panic

I think that’s all of them.


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