openLuup: VeraBridge

Good news! In fact, your system broke my understanding of a ‘normal’ Vera configuration. It’s the first time I’ve never seen device #2 as the scene controller.

Btw something else I did noticed... is that some variables (such as LoadLevelStatus) do not get updated accordingly in ALTUI .

Example: If I dim a light to 30% on the actual switch. the device’s variables get updated on the vera controller as well on openLuup’s user_data but for some reason it does not get updated on ALTUI. Perhaps I should talk to @amg0 about it.

Yes, let’s blame him first.

any experience with fibaro hc1 or hc2?
is there a way to connect to it via VeraBridge?

[quote=“Tommi, post:42, topic:189396”]any experience with fibaro hc1 or hc2?
is there a way to connect to it via VeraBridge?[/quote]

No, that would need a separate bridge, since the protocol is quite different.

There are now bridges or plugins for Vera, MySensors, ZWave hardware, and a prototype one someone has developed for Domoticz. So there is plenty of precedence, but I’ve never looked at the HC API.

Variables: BridgeScenes & CloneRooms I seen references in this forum and are true/false values.

But how are the variables: ExcludeDevices & IncludeDevices utilized?

Thanks,
Chris
Vera3 (UI5)

But how are the variables: [i]ExcludeDevices[/i] & [i]IncludeDevices[/i] utilized?

See original proposal from @explorer

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,37433.msg279723.html#msg279723

included in release 8, and subsequent developments…

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,34526.msg282421.html#msg282421

[quote=“akbooer, post:45, topic:189396”]See original proposal from @explorer

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,37433.msg279723.html#msg279723

included in release 8, and subsequent developments…

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,34526.msg282421.html#msg282421[/quote]

Jeez AK, as I’m learning your (and AM’s) program, I have a zillion questions in my mind. . . and I start right off bothering the group with one that you found so easily. I’m supposed to search myself! In this case my search criteria was through google:

ExcludeDevices openluup site:micasaverde.com
IncludeDevices site:micasaverde.com
excludedevices site:micasaverde.com

Didn’t find squat.

Thanks again for helping, I’ll practice my searching before asking the next question!

Be Well,
Chris

Actually, I’m very impressed that you bothered to find the relevant thread (over a year old!) on which to post your question, rather than just starting a new one.

I’ve just scanned the documentation and discover that there’s no mention of those variables in there, so it obviously needs updating! Normally, that would be the first place to check.

Hope it all does what you want, if not, there’s always the Suggestions thread!

AK

I’m new so it’s probably just me. I can’t seem to get VeraBridge to install/work?

Setup:

1 veraplus system
1 raspberry pi running latest debian

Installed master branch and then tried with development branch of openLuup. System is running with some minor items. Address later.
I go to plugs, click update for VeraBridge. Nothing. Reload. Nothing. Reboot. Nothing. No new device. Nothing.

I must be missing something.

Very unfortunately, AltUI has TWO “update” boxes for each plugin on the Plugins page. The checkbox style does nothing significant. The Update “cycle” button to the right of the Update text entry box is the one you need. Is that the problem?

On a separate issue, I’ve replied to you GitHub issue there, but it would actually be easier to deal with the discussion on this forum.

[quote=“akbooer, post:49, topic:189396”]Very unfortunately, AltUI has TWO “update” boxes for each plugin on the Plugins page. The checkbox style does nothing significant. The Update “cycle” button to the right of the Update text entry box is the one you need. Is that the problem?

On a separate issue, I’ve replied to you GitHub issue there, but it would actually be easier to deal with the discussion on this forum.[/quote]

Yes the “TWO” update button got me. In the Documentation it has the check box highlighted and not the cycle button on the far right. I didn’t really even notice it until you mentioned it. Ok I did that, device is present. I set the IP in the attributes. The IP box was a little hard to locate. Maybe I’m just going blind staring at the screen too much.

I see all of my devices. Now to play around.

Out of curiosity, is there a CLI method to add/update plugins or all through AltUI?

There’s an HTTP request, which is what AltUI uses, documented here

http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Requests#update_plugin

openLuup also has two shortcuts to update itself and AltUI from the latest master. For full and easy control, though, you should use the AltUI GUI which allows you to specify the version number or GitHub repository to use.

Additionally, the Alternative App Store has its own web interface for updating some plugins.

Very occasionally verabridge loses connection with a vera box. Looking to create a notification for when this happens. Anyone have a good way of implementing this? My idea would be to have a workflow check on the status of Display Line 2. If it equals No Vera then send a notification - just not sure how. I could have the workflow trigger virtual switches on my other veras and run a notification from them perhaps.

I only very recently experienced this as well. I am not sure what causes it but am suspecting that it is because of me fooling around with the vera and often doing luup reloads. Knowing the way it is communicating (basically a luup call), it is a bit surprising though.

For your purpose, I think you should be able to do a variable watch on the CommFailure of the verabridge device?

I don’t think that will work. IIRC, that only gets set at startup if there’s no communication, as a side-effect of luup.set_failure(), not during the running of the system.

Are you both, incidentally, using the asynchronous mode of the bridge? I have seen a very occasional problem with the bridge not recovering if Vera does a reload, but mostly it seems to run for weeks on end, so very hard to diagnose.

There is a bridge variable called LastUpdate which is not logged to file (to save flooding it.) If this doesn’t change every couple of minutes, or less, then there’s a problem.

I am using asynchronous mode indeed and it is roughly when it started… I agree that it is pretty rare. I had mine loose its polling this past week as I had my vera on and off swapping hardware and running various tests.

Not sure - how do I find our which mode it is in?

In any event this would be useful as something other than the bridge could be falling such as a network issue.

There is a bridge variable called AsyncPoll which, if set to true, indicates that you are using asynchronous HTTP requests.

Strange, all I have is below …

Am I correct in the assumption DisplayLine2 will read ‘No Vera’ when there is no connection?

Variable Value
BridgeScenes true
CloneRooms true
CommFailure 0
CommFailureTime 0
DisplayLine1 11 devices, 6 scenes
DisplayLine2 192.168.1.172 [Home]
ExcludeDevices
HouseMode 1
HouseModeMirror 0 : no mirroring
IncludeDevices
LastUpdate 7/29/2019, 1:02:17 PM
Offset 10000
PK_AccessPoint 45105824
Version v18.7.29
ZWaveOnly