Feature Requests

Posted on
Tue May 01, 2018 6:09 am
DaveL17 offline
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Feature Requests

Please add all future feature requests to this thread.

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Posted on
Tue Oct 01, 2019 10:28 am
Umtauscher offline
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Dave,

thanks again for your great plugin.
I have several devices on Wifi that are polled by your plugin regularly. Unfortunately some of them drop out of WLan for longer and more often than your plugin lets me configure. So from time to time one or two of them get disabled and I have to re-enable them manually.
It would be great, if the disable function could be disabled.
I suppose it's secure enough to set a proper timeout for each device and try again next time.

I hope you understand my problem.
Thanks
Wilhelm

Posted on
Tue Oct 01, 2019 4:08 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Wilhelm - I'm glad that you're finding the plugin useful. As you have seen, the plugin will attempt to connect to the device 10 times and then the device will be automatically disabled. This is a safety feature for instances where a data source becomes unavailable in order to limit the resources that the device is using (in vein). You can try to increase the timeout value -- but I don't know if we tested the condition where the timeout value is greater than the refresh interval. This might yield unexpected results, so use with caution.

Screen Shot 2019-10-01 at 4.52.54 PM.png
Screen Shot 2019-10-01 at 4.52.54 PM.png (129.14 KiB) Viewed 8295 times


I'm hesitant to include a setting to turn off the automatic disable feature, but I think it would be fairly easy to add a setting that would allow the user to be able to set the number of retries to something other than 10. Let me take a look at that.

Dave

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Posted on
Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:33 pm
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Wilhelm - I have uploaded a new version of the plugin which includes a user-configurable setting for the auto-disable feature.

The new version is available in the plugin store.

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Posted on
Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:12 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Wow Dave, that was quick!
Thank you very much. I will test it right away.
Thanks again, I will report back.
Cheers
Wilhelm

Posted on
Wed Oct 02, 2019 11:18 am
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Re: Feature Requests

My pleasure. Please do let me know how you get on.

Dave


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Posted on
Thu Oct 03, 2019 3:58 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Dave,

I have set the critical devices to 10 sec timeout and 100 retries and I poll them every 15 Seconds. This should be enough for a 25 Minutes interruption.
That's ok.
Let me run it for some days....

Thanks
Wilhelm

Posted on
Thu Oct 03, 2019 6:00 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Thanks Wilhelm - please do let me know how it turns out.

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Posted on
Sat Oct 26, 2019 6:59 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Dave,

your variable disable counter seems to work quite well.
So I added Triggers to my setup for critical devices to alarm me if they fail.
I added a trigger on "Device changed" for one of the GhostXML devices triggering "when device online?" "becomes false"
This ran for a few days until yesterday evening my WLan accesspoint was unreachable for a few minutes.
During that time, my trigger fired every 30 seconds while the device itsself stayed online, because I set the max retried on this device to 1000.

So is it possible your plugin dis- and enables the device during a timeout?
Otherwise I could not see how the trigger got fired every 30 seconds?

Do you have any other idea what may have happened?

Another thing is, that the custom states seem to vanish/get deleted during a timeout. The adapter plugin, which helps me formatting some of the variables throws error messages after a timeout:
Code: Select all
 Adapters Error                  Error in plugin execution ServerReplacedElem:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "plugin.py", line 130, in deviceUpdated
  File "/Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7.3/Plugins/Adapters.indigoPlugin/Contents/Server Plugin/sensor_adapter.py", line 37, in go
KeyError: key chmode_value not found in dict

chmode_value is one of the XML Variables.
Any input welcome!
TIA
Wilhelm

Posted on
Sat Oct 26, 2019 8:38 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Wilhelm - I'll have to do a bit of sleuthing to be sure, but there may be room for improvement to the order of operations that the plugin uses to refresh the data. It sounds like what may be happening is that the plugin is wiping the slate of device states clean before ensuring that the newest content has been downloaded successfully. It could also be a bug where the deviceIsOnline state is being set to True each time the plugin tries to connect (where it then sets it to False again).

The GhostXML plugin is a very transitory way to track external data. That is, the plugin itself doesn't maintain a list of device states or their values once they have been pushed to the Indigo device objects. That's why there is a trap to automatically disable the device if the source data goes away or is unavailable for a defined period.. But I agree that the last good states should remain if possible.

Let me do a little digging and see if I can figure out what's going on and whether a new trigger would fit the bill.

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Posted on
Sat Oct 26, 2019 8:56 am
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Re: Feature Requests

I should add that one circumstance that the plugin doesn't account for is the impacts to other parts of your automation if a device state actually goes away. That is (using your example) if the state "chmode_value" is removed from the source data, the "chmode_value" device state is going to disappear from the GhostXML device. That's the fundamental principle behind the GhostXML plugin (hence "Ghost"). It looks like the Adapters plugin expects that a linked device state will always be there and--when it's not--throws an error.

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Posted on
Sat Oct 26, 2019 9:33 am
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Re: Feature Requests

So that would mean, once a timeout occurs, all previous data is deleted?
Would it not be better, to delete or change the data only once a complete json is received?

Posted on
Sat Oct 26, 2019 9:56 am
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Wilhelm --

I wrote:
I'll have to do a bit of sleuthing to be sure, but there may be room for improvement to the order of operations that the plugin uses to refresh the data. It sounds like what may be happening is that the plugin is wiping the slate of device states clean before ensuring that the newest content has been downloaded successfully.

I need to do some investigative work to find out what's going on.

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Posted on
Tue Oct 29, 2019 12:36 pm
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Wilhelm - I wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you. I have a workable solution where existing device states will persist during the loss of communication (and when the plugin is restarted). However, I have a pesky bug that I need to chase down which is proving a bit elusive. That's what's causing the holdup. If I can't figure it out before long, I'll post a question to the forums--a solution usually presents itself right *after* I post something. :D

Hang in there. Hopefully, it won't be too much longer.

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Posted on
Tue Oct 29, 2019 1:10 pm
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Re: Feature Requests

Hi Dave,

thank you very much for the heads up.
What you are describing sounds great!
Since nobodyˋs life is depending on it I certainly can wait a bit longer.

Thanks again
Wilhelm

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