Device Creation

[Rick Tinker]

Blade,

Something that is really bothering me I am hoping you can get around to correcting soon. When you create the devices for BLRussound zones, you are not grouping the devices properly using the parent/child relationships. When I look at the Russound devices you create, I have 156 devices that are not grouped, have no location set, have no device API information, and can only be differentiated by the name of the device.

Although HomeSeer/HSTouch does not do anything with the Source Switch API, you can see in HSTouch what we have done with it being able to find and control thermostats and door locks. It should eventually be able to do the same with Music and Source Select devices. As such, the API should be set to Source Switch, and the device type should be one of the eDeviceType_SourceSwitch values. Each Zone should have a root device, and it can be a plain/unused device or you could make the "Name" device the root, and then each of the other devices should be associated as child devices, and that allows for them to appear as a group in the browser. You could then use the name value to list (for example) the volume as "Family Room Volume" rather than "c1z3 Volume". I am not interested in having to look up which controller and which zone everything is just so I can rename 156 devices.

Give it some thought and eMail me if you have questions, but this would be really good if you could make those changes.

[Blade]

Hi Rick,

Yes that needs to be done.
Here is what I was thinking...

I will create a controller root device
I will create a zone root device
All zone devices for a controller will be children of the zone root device and the zone root will be a child of the controller root

I can change the device type API to source switch.

I will make the controller root device a source switch type of root
I will make the zone root device a source switch type of root
I will make the zone devices for a controller a source switch type of zone

Thoughts?

[Rick Tinker]

Hi Rick,

Yes that needs to be done.
Here is what I was thinking...

I will create a controller root device
I will create a zone root device
All zone devices for a controller will be children of the zone root device and the zone root will be a child of the controller root

I can change the device type API to source switch.

I will make the controller root device a source switch type of root
I will make the zone root device a source switch type of root
I will make the zone devices for a controller a source switch type of zone

Thoughts?

I agree in part, but if you put all of those zone child devices under a single zone root, then you won't be able to move the devices to a location appropriate for the zone and have them appear together. For example, if I want all of the devices for c1z4 to appear together in the "Family Room" location, because Zone 4 is the family room, then you need to have a Zone Root device for EACH zone.

You have your plug-in return a capability of CA_IO OR CA_SourceSwitch so that HomeSeer knows that 'BLRussound' is a source switch plug-in.

You then create a root device for each controller, set the device type API to eDeviceAPI.SourceSwitch, then set the devicetype to Root (eDeviceType_SourceSwitch.Root). Add one device to that root and make the API the same, but the devicetype would be System, and the status can be where you display the status of the controller.

You then create a root device for each Zone, set its API to the same, its devicetype to Root, and then add a bunch of child devices representing different functions like you do today to the root for the zone they are with, and the devicetype is either Zone or Zone_Extended. You can do the same thing if you wanted to have devices for the Sources.

When you create these devices, you set the relationship to PARENT (root) or CHILD appropriately, and for the CHILD devices you set the associated devices to the Ref of the root device (the appropriate system, zone, or source root device) and then the root device gets added to its list of associated devices, all of the child devices for that root. So today you have 13 devices for a zone, so you would create a zone root device and 13 child devices; the root device would have 13 devices in its associated devices list, and the child devices would each have 1 ref in its associated devices list (the root).

When you create functions to do this stuff in your plug-in code it is a lot easier to manage than it seems.

When you are done, I can take the 14 devices for a zone and change their location and room properties, and then when I view them in the device management area, they will all be grouped together. I can even take a default name such as Family Room Volume and change it to just Volume because having it in the family room location already tells me where it is.

At some point, Rich can then make HSTouch recognize source switching devices like it does door locks and thermostats, so you can quickly/easily do control functions. (We would need to further describe some of the zone control sub-types though before that happens, but it is a good start.)

[DSteiNeuro]

Thanks

Thanks both for working on this!

BLRussound along with BLSpeech is one of my favorite plugins and critical to making my way to HS3. HST integration is another critical component.

DSteiNeuro

[Sireone]

Awesome! Blade, if you need some testers, you know S-F and I are game!

[happnatious1]

Create a device whose only function is to be the root, Yuk!!

With my monoprice amp plugin which I assume has most of the same devices as russound I made the most important device in the group (Power) the root.