AK Google Calendar plugin introduction / instructions / screenshots

[alexbk66]

My plugins:

AK IKEA AKSquare AKBond AKSonoff AKShelly AKRemootio AKEnphaseEnvoy AKGoogleCast AKGoogleCalendar AKSmartDevice AKHeatmiserNeo AKTracdown

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Google Calendar plug-in for displaying calendar events, triggering HS events based on upcoming calendar event (reminder, start, and end). HS Event actions for creating Google calendar events (both Event Start and Event End).

https://shop.homeseer.com/collection...lug-in-for-hs3


Features:

1. The plugin creates a parent root device for each Google Calendar you have setup. In addition it creates two calendar groups with configurable time range for each (i.e. default Today and Tomorrow calendars, or a week)



2. Detailed Event information - for each event by clicking on the event device:




3. HS Event Triggers: (1) Calendar Event Reminder, (2) Calendar Event Start, (3) Calendar Event End

Lots of global variables for use in Actions:







4. HS Event Actions: (1) Create Calendar Event, (2) Set Event End

I.e. instead of creating two separate calendar events for Gates Open / Gates Close - one event is created with event end time corresponding to Gates Close:

[alexbk66]

1. Configuring Google Credentials

Since Google use OAuth2 authentication protocol (which is not designed for console applications) this can be most difficult part depending on your OS and your setup.

For initial credentials setup you have to use web browser on same computer where HS server is installed and logged in in your browser with your Google email.

Other options are supported too (below).


For Linux please see post #6 first and this thread !

Go to Google Calendar device configuration:



Option 1. Easiest option (great if it works):
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(a) click on "Enable the Google Calendar API" link,

(b) then "Enable the Google Calendar API" button. Give the app any name, select "Desktop App":
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(c) This should bring a window with "Client ID" and "Client Secret" which you should copy to your Google Calendar Credentials configuration.

(d) Click button and follow the OAuth2 authentication procedure.

(e) Then all your Google Calendars should appear below.

Option 2. If the above didn't work for some reason:
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- click "Create Google API Credentials" link,
- then click on "Create Credentials" button and select "OAuth Client ID",
- then "Other" for "Application type" and give it any name.
- The rest should be same as for option 1 above:

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Option 3. If both options above fail (especially on Linux or headless HS server) -
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- Please check post #6 (FIRST)

- Configuring Google Credentials (on Linux) (or Raspberry PI) (Also authenticator.exe)

- https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/in...linux-headless

[alexbk66]

2. Configuration Options

The plugin creates a parent root device for each Google Calendar you have setup (real calendars). In addition it creates two calendar groups with configurable time range for each (i.e. default Today and Tomorrow virtual calendars).

General Configuration:

1. Event display date separator - to display event start date/time on new line use "<BR>". To display date in brackets use one of "(", "[", "{". If left blank - no event start date displayed.

2. Date and Time display format - see Custom date and time format strings

3. All Day Event start time (offset from 0:00 - positive or negative)


For all calendar groups (both real and virtual calendars) you can configure:

1. Number of events you want to display (default 5). Plugin will create a child device for each calendar event. To disable this calendar set the Events to 0.

2. Update rate (default 15 minutes). This only matters for detecting newly creating events. The plugin will automatically reduce the update delay closer to the event. To disable this calendar can set Update rate to 0:00.

3. Show Started Events - events in progress started, but not ended. If unchecked - the started event will disappear from HS.

For each real calendar additionally:

1. Include in Today
2. Include in Tomorrow

If you want to show events from this calendar in Today/Tomorrow calendars

For each virtual calendar additionally:

1. Range Start - when the time range for this calendar start, i.e. default 0:00 for Today and "1 Day" for Tomorrow
2. Time Range - default 1 Day for both, can be changed, i.e. to 7 days to show one week events.
3. Range Type (Fixed/Moving) - i.e. for Today calendar if "fixed" is selected - the display range will be always fixed from 0:00 to 24:00. For "moving" range show the events starting from "now" for the next 24 hours.

[alexbk66]

3. HS Event Triggers/Actions

HS Event Triggers:

(1) Calendar Event Reminder
(2) Calendar Event Start
(3) Calendar Event End
(4) Number of Calendar Events






HS Event Actions:

(1) Create Calendar Event



(2) Set Event End

[alexbk66]

4. Important Notes

1. Trigger functionality depends on the calendar configuration and works only for Calendar events displayed in HS. For example if you create a trigger for Event Reminder in Today Calendar and the Calendar Event starts tomorrow (so isn't displayed in Today calendar) and the event reminder is set for "One Day before the event" - it won't trigger. In other words, the Event Reminder trigger for Today Calendar only triggers for events starting today (i.e. within 24 hours)

2. For same reason if you want to use Event End Trigger - then "Show Started" option should be enabled for this calendar.

3. And for the same reason if you disable updates for particular calendar (by setting number of events or update frequency to 0) - triggers for this calendar won't work.

4. Event Reminder Triggers work only for the reminder set explicitly for the event - not the default reminders. Google Calendar API provides only reminder "overrides" by default. It is possible though to get the default reminders to work if required - please add Feature Request.

5. For some calendars Google doesn't send the clean Name, instead it provides an ugly looking ID. In this case I recommend in Google calendar settings set the calendar description field to the display name you want to see in HS - the plugin then will use the description instead of the name.

[alexbk66]

Configuring Google Credentials (on Linux)

Note: Google Chrome is not available for Raspberry PI, see this post for alternatives.

Problem I found with authenticating with Google from HS - it's caused by HS running as root, for authentication it tries to start a web browser, but on Linux running browsers as root normally is not allowed:

Running Firefox as root in a regular user's session is not supported

Here's what I did to make it work:

1. Install Google Chrome

wget wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

2. To let Chrome run as root:

sudo vi /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome
# Find a line starting from "exec -a" and replace it with:
exec -a "$0" "$HERE/chrome" "$@" --no-sandbox --user-data-dir

For test try starting Chrome as su

Note 1: You need to set Chrome as default browser, so when HS starts the browser - it will choose Chrome.

sudo google-chrome

Note 2: It's highly recommended first to login in Google Chrome with gmail and password before trying to get OAuth2 authentication.

Now you should be able to obtain OAuth2 ClentID and ClientSecret, copy them to the plugin config page and click "Submit" (see post #2). Then HS will start the Chrome browser and ask for authorisation.

[alexbk66]

Configuring Google Credentials (on Linux / Headless)

Requires Mono 5.20 and above.

For headless installation I created a little app authenticator.exe (attached) which you can run anywhere (after obtaining ClientID and ClientSecret, see post #2).

Note: I also recommend to use this app for testing your Mono version before you actually try to use the plugin. It makes it easier to troubleshoot Google Calendar API Mono .NET dependencies.

authenticator.exe [I]ClientID ClientSecret[/I]

It should request "User login & consent" and receive "Authorisation code" and on success print list of your calendars:

*********************************************
Credential file saved to: D:\My\Temp\Release\token.json

D:\My\Temp\Release\token.json\Google.Apis.Auth.OAuth2.Responses.TokenResponse-user

*********************************************
pp08kp35e77ap05mmm94a00gmk@group.calendar.google.com HS-Heat #f691b2
i04d1nir7395dmril3dvpstijg@group.calendar.google.com HS-Gates #16a765
jgcuopiksi78f231qq5t23b2pg@group.calendar.google.com Homeseer #fbe983
95dfa41185hao6gmvpss2nelro@group.calendar.google.com HS-TV #ffad46

All you need to do now - in Google Calendar Credentials configuration click and point to the file received above (
Google.Apis.Auth.OAuth2.Responses.TokenResponse-user). This should copy the file to the plugin bin folder on HS machine.
Alternatively you can copy the file manually to "HomeSeer HS3\Bin\AKGoogleCalendar\token.json" folder (may need to create "token.json" folder first)

Then click "Submit" button to apply the credentials (you still need the ClientID and ClientSecret fields).

[EDIT]
authenticator.exe is included in the plugin install from ver. 1.0.0.11 (downloaded version from this post may become incompatible with later plugin versions)

[alexbk66]

Good news - Mono 6 will be released soon which fixes the memory leak in Google Calendar API. Preview release is available here.

[alexbk66]

Mono 6.0.0 (released 17 Jul 2019) which should fix the memory leak. May I ask everybody to verify?
I.e. set ResetGCalTime and MaxGCalMemory to 0 - so RemoteGCal service shouldn't be used, the plugin will communicate with Google directly. Please monitor plugin memory for a few days.
If the memory leak is not present - I will happily remove unnecessary complex RemoteGCal service.

[alexbk66]

Confirmed - memory leak on Linux is fixed - no RemoteGCal service is required anymore.

[alexbk66]

In version 3.0.0.28 (in BETA section) I added some configuration for event display (see post #13)

[alexbk66]

Version 3.0.0.33 - Added "Enable" calendar checkboxes (on all config screens) - to disable unused calendars, instead on setting update frequency to Zero

[alexbk66]

Ver 3.0.0.34 - Added offset time to All Day Events (positive or negative)

[alexbk66]

Ver 3.0.0.36 - Fixed re-connecting to Google after an error