eTrack discussion

[nsheldon]

I just tried installing eTrack and right after specifiying the wattage of my devices I get an error that says "Can't continue createVariable". I ran the setup again and clicked edit which opened the script which I ran and entered the information again. It seems the specific section its failing at is the following when running the actual script:

Error: IndigoServer got an error: Can't continue createVariable

Script:

createVariable("eTrackCostPerKWH",costPerKWH, true)

I also just saw this in my Indigo Log, this happens when it loads the questions about costs for electricity.

Error CloseFile() caught exception: FileIOError -- cannot close unopen file
Error LoadAttachment() caught exception: FileIOError -- cannot read from unopen

Hi. Thanks for trying eTrack.

Which version of Indigo are you using? Which version of Mac OS X are you using? Have you recently upgraded Indigo or migrated it from one computer to another?

The "FileIOError" error messages concern me. This means that Indigo is unable to read files from your hard drive. If you've migrated Indigo from one Mac to another, this can often mess up the permissions on the entire Perceptive Automation folder in /Library/Application Support. I'm pretty sure there are some command-line fixes for this, if this is indeed the problem. If you haven't migrated Indigo, there could be some other permissions issue in which case a permissions repair using Mac OS X's "Disk Utility" application in the /Applications/Utilities folder might help. It's also possible that one of the attachment files in the /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 5/Scripts/Attachments folder are damaged. You might try removing all attachment scripts from that folder to, say, your desktop, and reload attachments using the Indigo client (Plugins menu, Reload Libraries and Attachments), then add the scripts back to the Attachments folder one at a time, reloading libraries and attachments each time to see which script is corrupted or unreadable.

As a possible temporary fix, you could also try manually creating the "eTrackCostPerKWH" variable in Indigo, then run the eTrack Setup again to see if you get any errors (or maybe a different error). If you get more errors in your Indigo log, please copy the log and paste it into your next post (inside a [ code ] [ /code ] tag so it formats correctly in the post).

[pegoto]

I did the following:

1. Repair disk permissions (There were a few repairs but non Indigo related)
2. Verify disk (This came up clean)
3. Did a real of the scripts in Indigo and it reloaded all with no error at all.
4. Create the eTrackCostPerKWH variable but it got stuck again in the install with the same message
5. I have not moved Indigo, its been on this Mac Mini for a while and I have Indigo 5.1.3 and Mac OS X 10.7.4

What I did do this time is copying the eTrack.scpt file to the Attachments folder and then re-running the setup. That seems to have fixed it. Thanks for your help, now off to playing with it!

[nsheldon]

What I did do this time is copying the eTrack.scpt file to the Attachments folder and then re-running the setup. That seems to have fixed it. Thanks for your help, now off to playing with it!

Thanks for going through all those steps. That does help the troubleshooting process. I'm glad you were able to get it to work. Your Mac mini setup sounds pretty close to identical to my own, at least in terms of hardware model, Indigo version and OS version. I tried to reproduce the error you're getting but could not. I suspect that, though the error doesn't indicate so, it might be a problem with the script file installation process which uses the command-line "cp" command to copy the eTrack.scpt file from the location of the eTrack Setup applet to the Scripts/Attachments folder in the Indigo 5 folder. Do you happen to have FileVault enabled? (I don't on my Mac mini). Is the account from which you're installing eTrack an Administrator account on the Mac? (It is on my setup).

In any case, since you got it to work, don't feel obligated to track down the issue. Unless others report the same issue, I'm comfortable writing this error off as an outlier if you are.

[jlambert121]

Just a heads up - the file linked at http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/filelib/index.php is 1.0b3.

[nsheldon]

Just a heads up - the file linked at http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/filelib/index.php is 1.0b3.

Hi. Thanks for the heads up. I'll send Perceptive Automation the latest version to post there.

[Dewster35]

Nathan - so this basically looks at each device and assigns a wattage to that device? Curious if there would be some way to integrate appliances if I have a synchrolinc attached? Pretty much all the lights in our house are device controlled so this would actually give a fairly accurate picture of our home's energy consumption with the exception of a couple of spare rooms in the basement.

[nsheldon]

Nathan - so this basically looks at each device and assigns a wattage to that device? Curious if there would be some way to integrate appliances if I have a synchrolinc attached? Pretty much all the lights in our house are device controlled so this would actually give a fairly accurate picture of our home's energy consumption with the exception of a couple of spare rooms in the basement.

Correct. It's an AppleScript extension to Indigo and an AppleScript installer that walks you through each compatible device in your Indigo database, allowing you to assign wattage values to each device. I don't have a SynchroLinc to test with eTrack, but I did try to program it to look for and work with SynchroLinc devices. If you try it out, let me know if it works with them. It will also work with iMeter Solo devices, though there are some additional manual configurations you have to do after eTrack installation to get those to integrate properly (the installer gives you instructions on how to do that).

[Dewster35]

Cool! Well I have a new project for next week then. Thanks for all the work to get this made.

[bbruck]

Hi,

This looks pretty neat!
I have v2, 4, 5 and 6 on my hard drive so I can't install it;

I went to library > application support > perceptive automation and deleted the Indigo 2 folder, leaving only three versions, but I still get the maximum of 3 buttons supported error. Any suggestions?

[nsheldon]

Hi. Thanks for the report. I'll look into that.

I added support for up to 3 versions installed when Indigo 6 beta was released without actually having all 3 Indigo versions installed, so I wasn't able to fully test eTrack's abilities to properly detect all 3 versions at once.

If you want to get started right away before I can figure out the bug, and if you're not using Indigo version 4 still, you could just rename the "Indigo 4" folder at /Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation to something like "old Indigo 4" and eTrack won't recognize that version as being installed any longer. I did test the eTrack installer with both Indigo 5 and 6 installed, so it should work fine with the folder renaming workaround.

[nsheldon]

New version 1.3.1

Fixed "Maximum of 3 buttons..." bug in eTrack installer.

See the original eTrack announcement thread for the download link.

[bbruck]

Nathan -

This is fantastic! Thank you SO MUCH for this plugin. I have about 25% of my light bulbs converted to LEDs, and this will give me a bird's eye view on where I can focus additional savings, and in addition be useful in educating my children on where we are wasting energy and money.

This is a little beyond the scope of the plug-in, but I'm hoping someone might be able to help. If you look at the lower left of my control page, where I've inserted the total cost of my shop lights in blue, you see that the cost is 0.0004329. Can anyone help me create a set of variables that will express these total cost numbers as currency - i.e., $0.01, or some fancy way to format the totalcost variable as it is being displayed in a control page?

[nsheldon]

Nathan -

This is fantastic! Thank you SO MUCH for this plugin. I have about 25% of my light bulbs converted to LEDs, and this will give me a bird's eye view on where I can focus additional savings, and in addition be useful in educating my children on where we are wasting energy and money.

This is a little beyond the scope of the plug-in, but I'm hoping someone might be able to help. If you look at the lower left of my control page, where I've inserted the total cost of my shop lights in blue, you see that the cost is 0.0004329. Can anyone help me create a set of variables that will express these total cost numbers as currency - i.e., $0.01, or some fancy way to format the totalcost variable as it is being displayed in a control page?

I'm glad you like it and that it's helpful for you.

As for the reformatting of the cost data, it's possible to do (by creating a trigger that fires when the total cost variable changes and whose action updates a different Indigo variable using either an embedded AppleScript or Python script). I chose the "poor man's" version of truncating the value on my control page by imply shrinking the total cost variable field on the control page so that it only shows about 5 characters, and set the label to the field to "$". I know that's not exactly the solution you're looking for, but it's an option.

[bbruck]

Perfect solution!

[gskarp]

I am very interested in trying out eTrack. However, your applet isn't supported on my old PPC mini. How do I get this script up and running manually? I added it to the attachment folder and reloaded. Now what do I do?