Creating 2way Feedback for Insteon Device w/in iRule App

I'm embarking on trying to create "2 way feedback" in a 3rd party app (called iRule) for all my Insteon switches / dimmers, as well as my Onkyo receiver. I'm not really sure where to even begin, so any help to point me in the general direction would be appreciated. I've attached a couple screen shots where I've copied and pasted pertinent parts of the builder interface for the iRule app when dealing with creating a feedback. I'm more looking for any direction someone can provide on what some of the fields in the builder are asking for (see screenshots below).

device feedback.png (58.92 KiB) Viewed 2386 times

numeric code.png (27.99 KiB) Viewed 2386 times

value properties.png (52.66 KiB) Viewed 2349 times

For the "device feedback" screenshot - I'm curious about the following fields which require entry: starts with, ends with, tokenized (yes/no), constant length (yes/no), and set variable.

For the "numeric code" screenshot - First, I'm assuming I should be adding numeric and not textual, right? Second, what is needed as entry for the fields: prefix, suffix, and set variable.

And finally, the "value properties" screenshot - I'm assuming most of this is how the feedback is displayed within the app?

If anyone can point me to literature or some other post where I can learn more about how to do this, it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help.

[jay (support)]

I don't know anything about their feedback mechanism, but I can tell you that custom device types, which I expect your Onkyo device is, won't return anything useful in the RESTful API (which is what you use to communicate with iRule. Only the built-in device types (on/off, dimmers, thermostats, sprinklers, etc) will return useful information.

Now, how to set up the feedback on those is quite beyond my experience so you'll probably need some help from the iRule guys. Or maybe there's a user hanging out here that's done it.

Hey Jay -

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I was hoping that another iRule user would recognize my post. I've reached out to the iRule guys as well. When I first created my system, I was of course able to send commands to all of my insteon devices via iRule to Indigo using RESTful API. I'm just gonna start tinkering with trial and error for the feedback. Within the RESTful API is there a command for requesting feedback from a device? I don't see it anywhere.

And my apologies for "double posting" (another post in the Insteon forum) - again, was just trying to find an iRule user who has done this. I'll delete that one.

Thanks again.

[jay (support)]

The second set of examples in the RESTful API doc page show how to get device status in a variety of formats. If you're talking about a push mechanism (where the API pushes device changes out), that doesn't exist - you need to poll devices to get their status.

Got it. I see that now. Didn't realize that would query a device. If I wanted to query all devices, instead of just one, what would that look like?

[jay (support)]

The example directly above it.

Getting a device list isn't enough though, since it doesn't return the status - you have to get the device list first, then iterate over that list getting status of each.

Thanks, Jay! I've got some learning to do.