PLEG Guru's - Looking for advice

After recently receiving my Vera Secure and being a long time Vera 2&3 user, this is my first foray into PLEG. I have successfully built the framework for a basic control of my security devices and have the following plug-ins installed: PL Core, PLEG, House Modes, I-Phone Locator, Day/Night & Push Notification. There are 17 zones (windows and doors) that I will be working with.

My first question is should I create unique instances of PLEG for the security controls to help separate the logic? I will be using PLEG for other tasks as well, such as the geofencing with I-Phone locator. If I do create multiple instances, are the Logic Inputs individualized to that instance and can I use the same name for a Logic Input in both instances and have them work independently? (for example s_30sec - a 30 second timer in the Alarm instance and s_30sec - a 30 second timer in another instance).

The second question has to do with Home modes. When Vera goes into Night Mode it seems that every alarm sensor gets set to either Armed or Disarmed depending on the configuration settings. How would one retain the state of a zone that is intentionally bypassed (disarmed) and still enable the alarm system without a Siren alert? Does this imply that the Home modes can not be used as an indicator of the Alarm status and a virtual switch or similar is required? I suspect that the Home modes could be configured to do nothing; Alarm off, no notifications or device status changes, but the Armed status of the sensors must still be set to either Armed or Disarmed. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and want to keep it very simple for my wife to use in my absence. Home modes initially looked like the simple solution, but now I’m not so sure.

Thanks for any input or feedback. I can post my PLEG configuration if necessary, but have not done so today since some of my sensors have not arrived yet.

Kartcon

You control what/when devices become armed when you setup the house modes.
Also you set default notifications there as well.

Input and conditions are scoped to the particular PLEG. If you have complicated logic that you want to reference in another PLEG, you can export the condition, and bond the new PLEG property in another PLEG device.

You do not need the House Modes plugin, it’s functionality is built-in to PLEG.

I think Richard meant to say “[font=verdana]You do not need the House Modes plugin, it’s functionality is built-in to PLEG.”[/font]

Richard, Thanks for the quick reply. I think you may not understand the issue with the Home Mode. if I set the configuration of Night Mode to ARM my Front Door sensor and the current mode is Home with the Front Door sensor set to DISARM (bypass) - by switching to Night mode the Front Door Sensor automatically gets set to ARM. If I set the Night mode configuration to DISARM the sensor, it will always be DISARMED. This is not the desired result if I WANT to maintain a bypassed zone temporarily and still set the alarm for the remaining zones. Examples of this scenario include a sensor that just quits working or has a dead battery, or guests that are arriving late or leaving early. I do not want the entire system offline, just the offending sensor.

I have tested this in both Armed and Disarmed, with the config settings set to either Armed or Disarmed and also with the Home modes set to Default versus Custom. The goal is to be able to bypass a certain zone without the Home mode overriding the setting. Unfortunately there is not a DO NOTHING option for Sensors.

See:
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Device_Categories

You might try to change the subcategory_num (using the Advanced Tab) on the device to 0 or 2 or 4