Creating/overwriting a text file from various device properties

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

I have a few multisensor 6 units inside and outside the house. As well as the weather underground app bringing in weather data. Is there any way I can make Vera spit out a text file with various strings of information from those sensors? Basically, I just need a text file that updates (overwrites) every 15 minutes with a single line that just says
“Indoor 68F 42% | Outdoor 77F 52DP 66%”

That’s the temp and humidity values from a multisensor, and a the temp, dewpoint, and humidity values from the wunderground app.

I’m thinking I can use PLEG to create the string and store the string in that multistring app. But how can I make it create/overwrite the text file?

#2

Former(?) forum member @RexBeckett explains how to do exactly what you describe in this thread.

But I’d recommend against doing it this way. As well as the risk of wearing out Vera’s flash memory by writing to “disk” every few minutes, Vera is not a good platform for programming your own activities and I suspect that you plan to pull this file to another system for processing there.

Perhaps a better method would be to have the “other system” pull the values directly from Vera with a URL call. The following URL will return a .xml file - there is actually no formatting it is just the value - with the current temperature. (Replace 999 with the appropriate device number.)

http://VerasIP:3480/data_request?id=lu_variableget&DeviceNum=999&serviceId=urn:upnp-org:serviceId:TemperatureSensor1&Variable=CurrentTemperature&output_format=xml

Naturally, this pulls humidity.

http://VerasIP:3480/data_request?id=lu_variableget&DeviceNum=999&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HumiditySensor1&Variable=CurrentHumidity&output_format=xml

You’ll have to look at the Weather Underground device to get the appropriate variables from it.

See also: Luup UPnP Variables and Actions

#3

That worked! Thanks. I pulled variables from my thermostat, outside sensors, and weather underground plugin using vbscript. Wrote a nicely formatted text string to a txt file. And Blue Iris can read that text string and put on an overlay for my security cameras.