New Plugin: Chained Events / Camera Patrol
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 11:23 amDownloads
Official Release On The Indigo Plugin Store TBD
Once out of BETA this will be published on the Plugin Store.
Install according to the Indigo documentation.
Development/Interim Release Directly From Git
Introduction
This is the initial BETA release of this plugin. It shouldn't cause any harm to your Indigo system or computer but it may be unstable. It is currently running stable in my production environment but this may differ on your own system. It is recommended that you do not install this plugin unless you consider yourself a more advanced Indigo user.
Originally developed as a way to run patrols on my security cameras, this plugin has the ability to do quite a bit. This allows you to chain a series of events together, separated by a preset time and optional random variant. Yes, it sounds like action groups, but action groups didn't work for my desire to have my cameras patrol to a preset for, say, three minutes and then move on, it seems that it would always get hung up after the second or third preset and then the action group would stop. This was my way to solve this problem for myself.
From a security camera concept this is a way to patrol through your presets, stop at the preset for a designated amount of time and then move on.
A few things that this can do:
While not yet implemented in this beta, there are some other things coming that differentiate this from action groups as well:
This is being released now as I am running this successfully and know some things I want to develop into it for future releases and, as I use it, i come up with more things I want out of this plugin and wanted to give you the chance to chime in on that as well.
Plugin Images
Official Release On The Indigo Plugin Store TBD
Once out of BETA this will be published on the Plugin Store.
Install according to the Indigo documentation.
Development/Interim Release Directly From Git
- GitHub Download Link
- Indigo-GitHub.png (11.14 KiB) Viewed 3579 times
Introduction
This is the initial BETA release of this plugin. It shouldn't cause any harm to your Indigo system or computer but it may be unstable. It is currently running stable in my production environment but this may differ on your own system. It is recommended that you do not install this plugin unless you consider yourself a more advanced Indigo user.
Originally developed as a way to run patrols on my security cameras, this plugin has the ability to do quite a bit. This allows you to chain a series of events together, separated by a preset time and optional random variant. Yes, it sounds like action groups, but action groups didn't work for my desire to have my cameras patrol to a preset for, say, three minutes and then move on, it seems that it would always get hung up after the second or third preset and then the action group would stop. This was my way to solve this problem for myself.
From a security camera concept this is a way to patrol through your presets, stop at the preset for a designated amount of time and then move on.
A few things that this can do:
- This will patrol from preset 1 to preset X (unlimited presets available) and pause at each preset for the designated [seconds, minutes, hours]
- Each preset can be configured to randomize the time to stay in the preset so no pattern can be detected
- Utilizes my plugins library that allows you to tap into all the actions and fields of every plugin you have loaded
- A bit of extra functionality added for the Cynical SecuritySpy plugin since that is part of my own security system and I wanted to have more capability with it, to that end it allows for you to utilize the "go to preset" and "move camera" functions from that plugin
- Rapid preset manipulation with the ability to duplicate a preset you have already saved and then simply edit it to suit your needs
- Ability to define what happens when you turn OFF the patrol, whether it just stays wherever you stopped it or it returns to a different preset
- Intelligently chain multiple cameras together so that your overlap makes sense - for instance you could have preset 1 move camera A to look at your front walk with a zero second "stay" period, then preset 2 moves camera B to look to where camera A is no longer looking and that stays for, say, a five minute period - this makes preset 1 & 2 effectively a group that work together to create an intelligent and overlapping security system
- NOW IN BETA 2: Each action (or preset) that you add allows you to "brighten" your device to increments of 1% to push the patrol to the next preset. This so it can be directly supported in all voice activated Indigo plugins (Homebridge Buddy, Google Home, Hue Bridge) to voice control your cameras to whatever preset you want (i.e., "Hey Siri, set Security Patrol to 3%" moves to preset 3)
- NOW IN BETA 2: The ability to run autonomously without the need for schedules by having its own built in schedule
- NOW IN BETA 2: Ability to issue an override to the current patrol that will allow you to force an action that stops the current patrol for X minutes (defined by your action) and then resume at the time you specify. Good if you are running a patrol but a trigger tells your camera to point to, say, the front door for a few minutes and then resume patrol
While not yet implemented in this beta, there are some other things coming that differentiate this from action groups as well:
- Currently only supports devices, but action groups and possibly variables coming soon
- Currently only allows you to move from one preset to the next but adding capability for you to have each preset perform another action before it moves on to the next preset, for example you can patrol to the far left to check out that view and have it return to your "default" view before moving to the far right view
- Once actions and variables are added you can chain these into your setup with "zero time" on them so that they can create a group of things to do on each preset (i.e., arm camera, move camera, take still picture as one preset).
This is being released now as I am running this successfully and know some things I want to develop into it for future releases and, as I use it, i come up with more things I want out of this plugin and wanted to give you the chance to chime in on that as well.
Plugin Images
