Questions & feature requests for the released WLED plugin

Use this thread to post any questions, requests or feedback.

Looking forward to using this new plugin, but having trouble with flashing the esp8266 board. I have downloaded both the ESPhome-flasher and the NodeMCU pyflasher but have not been able to get them to run. Got past the waining from apple, but when I start either flasher it starts to load it's icon shows up on the dock and then it quits. Is it possible I am missing a driver or some other resource ? Would appreciate any suggestions from anyone who has been able to flash the esp8266

Thanks
Elwood

Hi Elwood,
I cheated and used my Daughters Windows Laptop to flash the ESP8266, but a colleague (I think on Catalina) was able to flash it without adding any drivers. The drivers are available here https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers with instructions for various versions OS versions. I suspect that is your issue, the serial chip on the controller is a CP2102, you can find various videos etc on getting communications to work on the Mac.
Thanks,
Neil

Looking forward to using this new plugin, but having trouble with flashing the esp8266 board. I have downloaded both the ESPhome-flasher and the NodeMCU pyflasher but have not been able to get them to run. Got past the waining from apple, but when I start either flasher it starts to load it's icon shows up on the dock and then it quits. Is it possible I am missing a driver or some other resource ? Would appreciate any suggestions from anyone who has been able to flash the esp8266

Thanks
Elwood

Hi Elwood,
I needed to download a driver as I couldn't select it or see it from the dropdown menu. The driver that worked for me can be found by searching Mac_OSX_VCP_Driver.
Hope this helps.

Hi Neil

Loving the plugin, is it possible to control the sync button so that you could turn them off an on to sync?

Hi Neil
I did get it to flash using parallels with windows 10, took a lot of playing and had to install the driver. the flasher said all was ok. next step is to get it wired to the lights and see if it worked, Can't get to that till tomorrow so hope all works.

Colly
I did get the mac driver installed but still can't get the mac flasher to work. Will do some more playing with it and hope to get it working, hopefully that will be simpler than messing with parallels and windows. Looking forward to getting more ESP8266 boards.

Good luck to all getting this promising plugin up and running

Elwood

Hi Neil

Loving the plugin, is it possible to control the sync button so that you could turn them off an on to sync?

I suspect this is controlled by these two elements of the API

Code: Select all

udpn.send   bool   Send WLED broadcast (UDP sync) packet on state change
udpn.recv   bool   Receive broadcast packets

I may not have a chance until the weekend, but this looks more than possible.

Thanks,
Neil

I have posted a pre-release version at https://github.com/neilkplugins/WLED-indigo-plugin/releases/tag/1.0.1-alpha that basically controls those boolean values in the API, and adds the states to the device.

The actions are Set UDP Broadcast Mode and Set UDP Sync Mode. If you create actions for "Set UDP Broadcast Mode" it controls the "Sync Lights" options in the WLED UI. I cannot see any impact on the other action reflected in the UI but I haven't played with the WLED sync function so I am a little blind. It does effect the change though, so it should be fine to test.


I suspect when I get a chance to test and play the naming may change to become more logical and I cannot guarantee this won't break something between now and a properly tested and documented release version. Testing was really limited, and I will not be in a position to do more until the weekend, but feel free to try it out.

Hi Neil
Sorry for delay, just updated and are getting the following errors


Error device "WLED 49" state key syncbroadcastUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 49" state key synctoUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 50" state key syncbroadcastUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 50" state key synctoUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 49" state key syncbroadcastUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 49" state key synctoUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 50" state key syncbroadcastUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
Error device "WLED 50" state key synctoUDP not defined (ignoring update request)
NEST Home Living Room Thermostat last_connection updated to 2019-11-26T20:45:17.043Z
NEST Home Living Room Thermostat ambient_temperature_c updated to 22.0
Error device "WLED 49" state key syncbroadcastUDP not defined (ignoring

I think its looking for values on the broadcast and possibly a True of False for the Sync

Me again

its now working i went back in to each device and re-saved it and it has cured the errors.
i have tested the sync and all works well but it doesnt update in the wled app which i thought it would.
It would be good if it could if it updated a variable with the sync state.

Thanks for all your work so far

Keith

Keith,
I am on the road until Thursday. The two device states should reflect the WLED app settings, I know I could run the action and the “sync lights” toggle in the WLED UI would change (at least in a browser, but you may need to do a refresh of the page), but I struggled to see any impact of the second action, other than in the response from the API.

I created a true and false action for both sync actions and observed the result. You can also check the device state for these two options rather than needing a variable. I will aim to test and document more later in the week.
Thanks,
Neil

Keith (and others)

https://github.com/neilkplugins/WLED-indigo-plugin/releases/tag/1.0.2-beta is a beta version including the sync functionality.

It implements the API calls correctly, and for the Mobile UI it has a clear action to toggle the "Sync Lights" option in the Mobile WLED UI.

The control of "broadcasting" UDP states is a little trickier. It varies between the Classic and Mobile UI's in WLED, and more granular control of the sync functionality comes from the WLED sync settings. I haven't quite figured out what and how these all interact. That said.

- If you set one WLED to "Send Notification on Direct Change" in the Sync settings, other WLEDS that listen on the same UDP port will sync if you use the action "Set UDP Synchronise Mode" to true. The "syncToBroadcastUDP" device state will also reflect this and the "Sync Lights" option in the Mobile UI

If you use the Classic UI, it has a different approach, with Sync mode and broadcast mode represented by two arrows. The two actions I created toggle those arrows, but I don't quite get the expected behaviours, and it is not clear the order of precedence between the API, UI modes (Classic and Mobile) and the Sync Settings themselves.

The bottom line is that if you dedicate one WLED as a master, you can then toggle the others to follow it or to operate separately. It may not be a big deal (and indeed confusing) to have multiple WLEDS broadcasting and acting as a master (in which case I will re-label the broadcast actions).

I will do more experimentation and documentation..

Apologies, you may need to open and save the device configuration again if you get errors when upgrading from 1.0.1, will also look to implement Dave's guidance to handle this more elegantly for the formal release.

I have now figured this out, an new alpha version will come today with correctly defined states and actions. The alpha will not cause problems, but you may need to redefine actions and triggers so if you haven't started, hold off for a bit !

Neil

https://github.com/neilkplugins/WLED-indigo-plugin/releases/tag/1.0.3-alpha

A new pre-release version is posted above that correctly reflects the state naming and actions of the WLED UDP Sync Notifier capability documented https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/wiki/Sync-WLED-devices-(UDP-Notifier) I was confused by the change in approach between the two WLED UI's and naming that was a little counter intuitive.

I have updated the Wiki to reflect the new device state and action names which should now be final

Apologies for the people who need to open and save the devices to correct any state update errors