I just upgraded my Vera to UI7 and I HATE HATE HATE it! So much so that I restored back to UI5 on my Vera3. I have a Plus on its way so won’t have a choice with that though. In particular I hate the “Fisher Price” look and feel and device configuration approach. Particularly with PLEG, which I use a lot. I love the AltUI look and I congratulate you on an amazing job, but to be honest, most of what I do with the browser is configuration, so I am just wondering if there is a technical reason why configuration of devices can not be included in the UI or if you have plans to do so? For me, that would allow me to completely move away from the awful UI7 interface and probably a lot more people as well.
I just upgraded my Vera to UI7 and I HATE HATE HATE it! So much so that I restored back to UI5 on my Vera3. I have a Plus on its way so won’t have a choice with that though. In particular I hate the “Fisher Price” look and feel and device configuration approach. Particularly with PLEG, which I use a lot. I love the AltUI look and I congratulate you on an amazing job, but to be honest, most of what I do with the browser is configuration, so I am just wondering if there is a technical reason why configuration of devices can not be included in the UI or if you have plans to do so? For me, that would allow me to completely move away from the awful UI7 interface and probably a lot more people as well.
Thanks[/quote]
thank you for your encouragement. that has been a question I asked myself quite sometime but I tried to shy away from it. There must be a reason why a single guy like me, doing this on his extra free time can do ALTUI , while MCV has a complete development team. the configuration of device can be quite problematic and unstandard. without access to all these device and ability to almost customize for each kind, it would be very hard and not realistic for me alone.
That being said:
ALTUI enabled you to change zwave parameters of device in the control panel / configuration button
ALTUI exposes the zWave object (id1 ) and all its UPNP actions in a dialogbox where you can trigger actions like include exclude heal etc… as shown in the screen shot. BUT to be fair , this could be dangerous and the parameters to use are not documented, not well defined. so could be quite experimental. but the capability is a little bit there
last but not least, there are other reasons to use ALTUI since it is not just a browser skin, it is also a backend lua devcie offering new features to Vera box that UI7 do not have:
scene based on variable triggers
history of variable and push data to cloud storage / graphs
workflows
multi controller mode…
I somehow prefered so far to put my time in adding these features rather than redoing someing that UIx has , not great, but workable to add/manage devices
hope this clarifies, if you do experiment with the zWave UPNP actions and find the right parameters to use, let the community know and eventually I could develop some UI shortcuts to these actions with these parameters
Ok thanks for the clarification. I must confess I have only scratched the surface of what this can do, so I will need to look for some examples and tutorials on the kind of functions you mention there.
I guess top of my wishlist would be a collaboration with RTS to include PLEG configuration, as this is where I and a lot of others spend most time… I did see mention in his thread regarding the next generation of PLEG UI that he was looking to make it more “AltUI friendly”, so maybe that will one day come?
[quote=“Borat, post:3, topic:192071”]Ok thanks for the clarification. I must confess I have only scratched the surface of what this can do, so I will need to look for some examples and tutorials on the kind of functions you mention there.
I guess top of my wishlist would be a collaboration with RTS to include PLEG configuration, as this is where I and a lot of others spend most time… I did see mention in his thread regarding the next generation of PLEG UI that he was looking to make it more “AltUI friendly”, so maybe that will one day come?[/quote]
Depends on Richard I suppose. the PLEG plugin was not compatible ( encrypted and relied on too much of UIx internal apis ).
I did made the recording API for him ( was a suggestion from Richard ) so should be on its way.
Regarding state machines, ALTUI workflows is the way I would recommend a new user to go for the common tasks as it gives wysiwig and graphic real time view of whats going on
[quote=“Borat, post:5, topic:192071”]Thanks. Can you explain the pros / cons / differences of using the workflows vs PLEG please?
Cheers[/quote]
I do not really know well or use PLEG especially the latest versions so my input is to be taken with care.
nevertheless my feeling is that ALTUI offers a wysiwig graphic editor to create workflows and an interactive real time graphic of the workflow where you see the evolutions as they happen for active states ( changes color ) , variable bags taknig values, or state change history timeline.
Also I hope the approach is more intuitive, requires less manual coding , ( you can use Blockly editor if you are not a LUA expert ) and easier to debug because you really see the graphs. but is probably less powerful.
One last thing , since it is integrated in ALTUI so no need for an extra plugin which allways take up resources , typical plug in you would not use : combination plugin, virtual switch plugin, variable container plugin, various notifications plugin ( if you use the AtLUI_notify() pushing box method ) etc… all this in the end means more resources & memory for real work
Yes i spotted that. Interesting that the graphical approach in PLEG seems to be converging a little with the workflow approach in ALTUI. I wish I knew more about state engines to understand it!
ask … to some respect PLEG and workflow are a similar mind set. you need to think in terms of “states” and less in terms of code. like automates in embedded systems.
a lamp is ON , or OFF. then you add your own states and it becomes
a lamp is ON , or OFF, or AUTO-ON by a timer. and when in AUTO-ON state , after 10min it switches off.
a example which would have been a nightmare with scene & LUA that i use is for my Movie Lamp Projector which needs to cool down before I switch it off.
3 states
-projector is ON ( i detect it with a powerplug which gives consumption > 80W )
-projector is COOLING DOWN ( i detect it with consumption > 20W < 80W )
-projector is in STANDBY ( i detect it with consumption < 10W )
then , if somebody or a scene switches the projector on because they want to see a movie, my workflow goes into projector is ON state. from that state, every 30min it quickly goes into a NOTIFICATION state where I send me a reminder using ALTUI_notify() function to call pushingbox to reminds me it is on and comes back to the ON state immediately; this way I get notified if somebody forget to switch it off
when the person is finished looking at his movie, he (or a scene ) will put it COOLING state. here I must not cut the power, so I simply wait and do nothing. workflow are great for that. I know I am in cooling down state but not done yet.
when the projectors finishes cooled down, it goes into standy state which I detect properly with my power plug so the workflow goes in STANDBY state. Now, here I know I need to wait 5min and I then I force a switch OFF the zwave plug to save current and get back to start state of the workflow. waiting for the power plug to tell me someone has switched it ON again…
a) it works
b) even if lua reloads/vera reboots, my 5min timer will not get cancelled like in classic LUA + scene approach, so I am sure it willl be switched off
c) much easier to see & debug
d) with the BAG variable I can count how many minutes the project has been on !
Ok thanks for the explanation! I guess based on that I kind of do know how to use them as I use PLEG a lot, so I just need to get clear in my head how to translate what I know from PLEG (or if there is any benefit in me doing so, as I will always need PLEG).
I am adding a healing, include and exclude button in ALTUI.
doing this work I realized that in fact the functionality was already there , I just make it easier.
but you could see it by
a) going into device page
b) selecting invisible in the filter
c) spotting the 0-1 device (zWave ) and opening its action dialog box
d) choosing your parameter and actions
it is cumbersome and not user friendly. even potentially dangerous
so I ll add a easier user interface ( preview attached ). note that I am not sure manual healing is recommended. I did try on mine and it took a couple of actions on each device to remove ‘error’ status on some device.
Best Home Automation shopping experience. Shop at Ezlo!