A new plug-in is now on the Mios Marketplace to better support of the Evolve Guest Controls LCD1 scene controller. This controller has 5 buttons and an LCD screen with programmable labels across from each of the buttons.
You can read more about it on the Wiki page here: [url=http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_evolve-lcd1]http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_evolve-lcd1[/url]
This is a special plug-in in several respects. As such, it may be of interest to other developers even if you don’t have a LCD1 device.
It is a hybrid Z-Wave/Lua device. The Z-Wave part works like most other scene controllers. However, I have added Lua code to control the LCD screen. Unfortunately, Z-Wave devices cannot execute Lua commands (except at initialization) so this is actually two Vera devices, but only one is visible.
Also, unlike other plug-ins, this device includes (and excludes) like other Z-Wave devices using the Z-Wave button on Vera’s front panel. It uses an (until now) unused feature hidden in Vera: a file called /etc/cmh/zwave_products_user.xml which has the same syntax as the existing /etc/cmh/zwave_products_sys.xml which allows specialization of specific Z-Wave devices. For example, I have added predefined configuration options with useful labels for the LCD1 which you can access from the device Options tab. More importantly, it selects a LCD1-specific device type when Vera matches the manufacturer-specific device codes.
I also added an entry in this file for the Evolve T100-R thermostat which includes a long list of configuration parameters. No doubt that other people can significantly expand this and add device-specific configuration parameters for their favorite Z-Wave devices.
Unfortunately, there can only be one zwave_products_user.xml (which can describe many different devices) so that if future plug-ins need to enhance this file, we will need to implement a more sophisticated installer which can edit the file to add entries.
This is an early alpha version of this plug-in and I’m concerned that I have already encountered bugs in the LCD1 firmware which can randomly cause the screen to become garbled, or the device to reboot when switching screens. I would like to get feedback from anyone who can try this out. Please also include the firmware revision of your device.
You may also want to apply the bug-fix patch which I posted earlier here: [url=http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,15113.msg114885.html#msg114885]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,15113.msg114885.html#msg114885[/url] to avoid bugs in the way certain tabs are displayed.
(Note to anyone who downloaded the plug-in from the original version of this forum post: Please get the version in the App store. It fixes an important bug during inclusion and also includes the proper icon.)
Cheers!