Is it possible to use Indigo to monitor devices and ISY994i

I use an ISY994i controller at home and another one at work.

I use the Network Resources, extensively, to send commands like "turn on the projector".

The problem is that ISY has no way or actually QUERYING the project to see if it is running. I ran run a Query command and get a response, but ISY has no way or parsing the responses it gets and doing something based on that.

I'm wondering if there is a way to have a side program/device that will monitor my network and the ISY and push changes to the ISY (either as scene changes or maybe just pushing updates to variables.)

Here is just one issue that is a MAJOR issue that ISY can't solve, by itself: I push a button on the wall to start a scene and fire off a Network Resource to tell the projector to turn on. Maybe the projector turns on, maybe it doesn't. The ISY has no way of actually KNOWING if the projector is running.

I need some kind of "All Seeing Eye" that can monitor the state of scenes ("the ISY has the scene Projector turned on") and monitor the state of devices ("it has been 10 seconds and the projector is still reporting that it is powered off") and then tell the ISY to re-send the command or turn off a scene or something.

Anyone got any ideas? I was thinking that maybe something like Indigo, running on an old Macbook Pro, could accomplish this task of being the "All Seeing Eye", but I don't know if it can actually do that.

Maybe there is a much better solution that I'm not aware of?

Thanks,

Chris

[jay (support)]

I didn't see this post when I replied to your email yesterday, so I'll just post what I sent to you in the email:

Indigo can absolutely do that (and much, much more) - it excels at integrating other devices and services. In fact, there’s no need for the ISY at all since Indigo can talk to the PowerLinc (and therefore the Insteon network) directly.

There are several different ways to accomplish what you’re looking to do: you could use scripts to do all the work, you could use the Virtual On/Off device in combination with scripts (so that the projector is represented in Indigo as a real device) and a variable (for status), or you could write an Indigo Plugin to talk to the projector (which would also present the projector as a device but would offer even greater flexibility and has the added benefit that others that have your projector type can use the plugin).

Indigo’s scripting language is Python, which is quite easy to learn - we have a lot of users here on our forums that have no prior programming experience that have picked up Python successfully. I recommend that you sign up for a 30-day trial and give it a spin. Feel free to ask more specific questions here - we monitor them constantly and you’ll have the advantage of our very friendly user community to chime in. It may be that someone has already written some scripts that talk to your projector (whatever it is) or have something very similar and can help you get started.

The open source ISY Bridge plugin may do the ISY integration side, though I don’t actually know how well it works any more. The original author donated the source to us a couple of years ago, so we put it up on our Github repo. Feel free to fix any issues you find with it and send a pull request.

I set up the demo software and installed the ISY plugin. It's a little janky, but it does work.

I'm now stuck at the point of trying to query my devices that are hooked up via Serial to Global Cache GC-100 devices. I need to query the device (which I know how to do from my ISY experience) and LOG the result of that query. I'm stuck at that point. Can't figure out how to just send a TCP string and log the result.

I posted about it over at this forum post:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15542

[jay (support)]

Python has a bunch of built-in network libraries, so you should write a script that queries your device, then it can insert that data into Indigo Variables.

You're going to need to spend a little time understanding how Indigo works and then how Indigo Scripting works. It's all documented though.

Please don't be offended, but the reason that I'm considering Indigo, rather than an Open Source alternative and/or rolling my own, is because I want a graphical editor where I can set up conditions and have the system act on those conditions.

Python programming is NOT an option. If I'm going to do Python programming, then there is no reason to pay for Indigo.

I have made a Trigger condition with Cynical Network and I can query the GC-100 device and it DOES update the variable as defined in the Cynical Network TCP Out device. The problem now is that it only updates that variable once. The next time it runs, it clears the variable out completely.

I could easily create a scheduled task to run once a minute and query the GC-100 and update the variable.

Another scheduled task would run every few minutes, see if the variable is set to a certain value, see if one of my ISY devices is currently ON and then act on that condition.

This is basically working, except the variable only gets updated once and then cleared on subsequent runs, rather than being updated.

[jay (support)]

No offense taken - everyone must determine what their needs and priorities are.