MiCasaVerde Vera UI5, UI6, UI7 Plugin

[kkl]

If it helps, when I select from the plug-in configuration 'All Vera Data', I get this error:

When I select 'Add On's", I get this error:

I don't know what either button is supposed to do.

[kgschlosser]

yeah i never got around to finishing those bits. i thought i had remove the options to click on them... huh guess not..

[Sulliv@n]

Any progress?

[kgschlosser]

its gonna be a while. it's a very large ordeal to essentially rewrite the entire thing. because of the variable you want me to access and be able to change i had to change the type of data i was requesting from the vera. now i have to grab the whole data set. and not just a device list. and that data set is HUGE. and because of the enormity of data i didn't want to request it as an XML because the data is stored as json on the vera and having the vera convert that much was make what is already very bad. to absolutely extremely horribly worse. (don't know how that could happen to the vera ) but because of the goofy way the vera does things i had to write a way to convert the data from the vera to xml. because dealing with xml and xml objects is far easier to keep track of. and i can pass an xml item as an object to be a child of a class. for instance


say you have a device that is a light... and it's a dimmer. since the vera has categorized things into 27 different device types i have created 27 different "objects" or containers to hold the information for devices in that group. and the actual device information is an object as well. and that object can be asked to do specific things and it will make the proper call to the vera when say it is told to set the light level to 10%

but the categories that hold the devices are what house the configuration dialogs and any other category specific things like arming all alarm sensors. or turning all the lights on.

this expansion is going to be massive. every single piece of the vera is going to be exposed so if there is a plugin that you have installed that you want to control. you will be able to without my having to make something to do it.

and this things is adaptive. so unless they make some kind of HUGE change like completely change how all the data is stored. it should always work. I did find out that vera does use a standardized means of setting service names for specific device functions like BinarySwitch1:TargetValue= is not vera specific but is a upnp classification of a device. so these things should never change. and that is now what i am having the plugin look for when reading the data from the vera to set the group the device is supposed to be in

[loveleejohn]

Thanks so much for this plugin kgschlosser! It's proven to be very helpful for automating Vera in eventghost and gives us an important bridge to control our devices from our computers! Quick question, is there a way to limit the amount of reporting for Aeon Smart Energy Switches? I have 3 of these that are constantly feeding garbage updates to the eventghost window.

[kgschlosser]

shoot me over a screen shot of the "garbage" I need to see what it is that is changing to cause it. It could be something really simple to remove.
and also copy and paste the log entries

but I am not necessarily sure the problem is with the switch or the plugin it's probably a problem with the vera UI.. are you running UI7?..

all the plugin does is ask the vera to send back things that have changes since the last query... so if the vera is sending data back when you physically didn't change anything then either something on the vera did or the switch did.. but the switch has to be asked for information it will not just randomly send the information.. it's what is called the polling interval on the vera.. that is how often the vera will ask the device for an update. so if you are getting garbage faster then every 60 seconds (default value) for a specific switch then there is an issue with UI7

[loveleejohn]

Hey there kg.
I'm calling the first screenshot Vera Noise1.PNG and the second is called Vera Noise 2.PNG

I've shared the corresponding log entries as text in documents called Vera Noise1.txt and Vera Noise2.txt

Vera Noise 1.txt

(2.06 KiB) Downloaded 133 times

Vera Noise2.txt

(5.06 KiB) Downloaded 140 times

[kgschlosser]

now the first "noise" should only happen when the vera reboots.. it could possibly do it at about 2AM or so every morning when it "heals" the zwave network... the second is the evergy use of the lights.. now why it is updating such a small amount i do not know.. You would have to give me a while to figure out where would be best to stop it from doing that.. I am not sure if it might be best to take a look at the settings for the light and see if there is a way to stop it from making that small a change from the vera it's self..

the reason why i say this is because the vera is handicapped in the performance department. and that is going to impact it if the devices are doing it all the time.

[loveleejohn]

I can certainly understand your logic. Hopefully it's something that can be limited on the plugin side because other than changing the polling times, I'm rather clueless on the Vera end of things as well.

[kgschlosser]

its very odd the wattage is being reported like that... I can add a smoothing option to it.. and have that option be user settable to a specific watt change...

as an example

if you enable the smoothing and set the smoothing to +- 5 watts. it will not report anything unless there is a 5 watt change. I will not have it update with the new value until the change is +- 5 watts.


but the other thing with the devices being added and removed i need to know how often that occurs. but the only time it will do this is if for some reason the Vera sends out a whole new report not an update report. and i do not know what would cause this to happen. This is going to require a lot more work to correct. and I am about 1/2 way done with rewriting the plugin in it's entirety. I am trying to make the new plugin to be more dynamic. because in all honesty I am going to be getting rid of my Vera as it is way to problematic. and without me using one i will not be able to maintain or write anything new for it.

[loveleejohn]

I'm also contemplating a divorce from Vera... I would have jumped onto the smartthings bandwagon long ago if the platform was not restricted to mobile phones. That said, I think a limit on the wattage reporting would be very useful and if it's not too difficult, perhaps temperature reporting limitations would help as well for sensors with temperature monitors. Vera seems to be reporting every change of 1 degree and for watts it seems to be reporting energy fluctuations down to .001!

[kgschlosser]

Yessum I can do that.

[kgschlosser]

ok so i haven't forgotten about you..

While I would really like to take care of this for you. I have spent to much of my life dealing with this piece of shit Vera 3. sorry for the language but I am highly aggravated. I changed nothing on my vera. nothing at all. i simply go and access the UI on the thing. and it forces me to login as it always does.. and the damned thing bricked.. again.... now there is a method to recover from a bricked vera. tho i have not messed around with the thing for almost a year and the last time i did was when i needed to recover from a brick. I do not remember the process. as it was quite crazy. had to do with plugging into the 2nd lan port and sending command via telnet to some odd IP address to get the thing into some kind of a firmware loader mode. and this all had to be done while pressing button on the thing. that being said.. I do not remember the process. and I can't seem to locate it on the net. I have spent to many weeks... and i mean weeks of my life on this POS. I am going to make a you tube video of me smashing the snot out of it with a hammer. and I will be sure to post it.

So that being said... I am not going to be able to fix your problem.. Tho i can tell you how to remove specific events from being generated by specific device types.


you will need to edit TextControls.py. I would do this with somehting like notepad++ or sublime text as the formatting could get all screwy with notepad. and those programs will also tell you the line number. I am going to tell you what line number to look at for specific things...

line number 186 to line 219 this is the device category name to vera identifier for the category. except for the negative numbers and number 0 is an unspecified category and i have found that only plugins will use 0 so i labeled it plugins.
so starting at number 1 to number 27. look for the device category that is in the event that is listed here. and make note of the number. you will need it for the next step


line 222 to the end of the file is another list. this has those same numbers. to the right of the number you will see somehting like this

Code: Select all

'2':  { 'name'         : ['Name'],
        'room'         : ['Room'],
        'level'        : ['Level'],
        'status'       : [['Off', 'On']],
        'watts'        : ['Watts Used']},

category 2 is for Dimmable-Switch

you will want to make it look like so

Code: Select all

'2':  { 'name'         : ['Name'],
        'room'         : ['Room'],
        'level'        : ['Level'],
        'status'       : [['Off', 'On']]},
        # 'watts'        : ['Watts Used']},

the # makes it so the line will no longer be used in the code. but I still have to close the statement. which is the } so i simply added it to the line above. before the comma.
by doing this events will no longer be generated for wattage readings for a Dimmable-Switch

sorry for the inconvenience. But it is now time for me to change to a different means of controlling my lights. I am going to get a zwave usb dongle and I am going to start using Domoticz. I have had enough with MicasaVerde Mios and the Vera 3. I should have returned the thing when i got it and the lights in my house started doing a light show at 2:00AM every morning. and I have submitted many many many support tickets about it. and 3.5 years later and 2 UI major version changes and it still does the same thing. and Vera says it's the switches and the switch manufacturer says its the Vera.. and I got a small wall keypad that is a zwave controller.. and paired it with my switches.. and my lights do not blink. so it's the Vera. they are just a bunch of tools over there. And I have had enough!!

Sorry Folks. Maybe someone else will be willing to take over this project. they are more then welcome to. But I have had enough with this thing.

[loveleejohn]

Yikes! I had no idea that you might run into so much of a headache with this one kgchlosser. I've also ran into the exact same quirky behavior with my veralite. Just the other night my living room lights started pulsing to an imaginary beat! I also had to deal with the bricking issue one time but I did find this page in the micasaverde forums that finally helped me to get it back online. Maybe this might help with yours? http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=9949.0 The post by mcvflorin was what I was able to use to regain access. At any rate, I've only stuck with Vera because they were all I knew about when I got started. Maybe I'll have a look at the Domoticz program you've mentioned at some point in the future if my Vera keeps acting weird. For now I'll try the changes you posted and let you know what happened.

[mhendu]

Interesting - I'm on UI5 and have never had a similar problem. Biggest issue with Vera for me is that it appears to not have enough memory / processing power to really handle moderately complicated automation across a number of devices. I've got about 50 plugins on my Vera Lite and sometimes it doesn't trigger events like it's configured to (I use PLEG for most of the automation). That's why I started looking into Eventghost, to hopefully take some of the processing off of the Vera so it could be used as a dumb controller, but might make more sense to explore a PC-based solution where memory / processing power won't be an issue. I also never really liked the idea of having all my plugins accessible to the MiCasaVerde folks, who theoretically can access your unit at any point. Preferable to paying a monthly subscription fee to use my home automation controller, as is the case for some other solutions, but I'd prefer a closed system where I control access.