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Editing Device Controls in Status/Graphics Page - new controls do not show up in HS4

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    Editing Device Controls in Status/Graphics Page - new controls do not show up in HS4

    A bit of a strange problem here, related to editing the available Controls for 'Group Controller' (GC) devices created by the MNS Insteon plug in. Mark Sandler mnsandler (MNS plugin dev) thought I should post this issue here for broader community input.

    Long story short, when trying to add/revise the Controls for Group Controller devices, these controls do not show up in the HS4 web Device cards. Mark is working through some changes to his plug-in so that new Group Controllers created will already have these buttons by default, but it seems that 'old' GC's should be able to have these added manually via edits to the Status/Graphics page in the HS4 Device.

    Group Controllers are the equivalent to Insteon Scenes. By default, Group Controllers created by MNS Insteon use a drop down list for access of Controls. It's been reported by Mark that this is due to the limited/unusual types of commands that a Group Controller can use as specified by the Insteon documentation.

    The HS4 Device card for a Group Controller used to look like this. (I'll refer to this as an OLD GC). As you can see, the only Control on this card is a drop down list:
    Click image for larger version

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    MNS has been developing a recent plugin beta which adds On and Off button controls to the GC Device card (I'll refer to this as a NEW GC):
    Click image for larger version

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    According to discussion in the MNS Insteon forum, it should be possible to adjust the OLD GC Controls in the Status/Graphics tab to match those created by a NEW GC and get the same outcome. I've been doing some testing on this, and have found some very strange anomalies with the way that HS4 behaves after editing the Status/Graphics.

    To start, I created a NEW GC (NewTest), by creating a Group in the MNS Insteon plugin. This NEW GC contained the On and Off Buttons.

    I then opened an OLD GC (All Upstairs Lights), and edited the Status/Graphics pages to exactly match all values shown in the NEW GC.
    See screen shots below: On the left is NEW GC "NewTest" with default settings as a Group Controller.
    On the right is the OLD GC "All Upstairs Lights". For this OLD GC, I have manually revised all of the Control and Status/Graphics lines to exactly match the NEW GC.
    Click image for larger version

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    Click image for larger version

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    Since these two GC Devices have exactly the same package of Control settings, they should have the same Device Cards in HS4, right? No, they do not. The Device cards are shown at the beginning of this post. The OLD GC retains the old control of a dropdown list ONLY, while the NEW GC has the On/Off Buttons as well as the dropdown.

    The mysteries continue -
    Both the OLD GC and the NEW GC have a doubling of the ON & OFF controls in their respective dropdown lists. The OLD GC had these added when I manually added the 101 & 102 Control lines. The NEW GC was created with these duplicated controls in the dropdown.
    Click image for larger version

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    Making things even more strange, HSMobile appears to parse the Control scheme for the OLD GC correctly. When looing at the Device or a dashboard Widget in HSMobile (iOS), then the On and Off button controls show up. This is akin to what I would expect to see in the HS4 web Device card.
    Click image for larger version

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    HSMobile (iOS) doesn't appear to like the dropdown list Controls for GC's, the blank whitespace to the right of the ON/OFF buttons brings up the selection list from the dropdown (notably, with only ONE instance of ON and OFF, not a doubling like in HS4).
    Click image for larger version

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    At this point, I'm not sure if these issues are more related to HS4, or the way that MNS creates these GC Devices. Does anyone here have any better info/advice, either for me as an end user, or for Mark as a plug-in developer?

    Most of this same information and some of the struggles with using/customizing (Insteon) Group Controllers are in threads in the MNS Insteon Forum, notably these discussions:

    https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/hs...-release-notes

    https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/hs...on#post1542884

    https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/hs...y-in-hs-mobile

    GC's seem to be a control construct which is somewhat unique to the Insteon world. Mark has done a great job with the MNS Insteon plug in to keep the lights on at Insteon users' homes, but translating the kinda strange GC behavior into HS4 seems to be a challenge. Solving the above problems would be amazing!

    Thanks for any advice this community can provide!
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