Animation problems

[randy]

Wim;

I hope I can explain this clearly. As I have written in another post, I am changing my driveway path lights out from LED strips controlled by 4 Dresden RGBWW controllers to 12 individual Hue bulbs. The work is done, the bulbs are included and identified. All 12 are in a single group. The 4 Dresden controllers were also in a single group.

I am now building animations to replace the few I had with the old controllers.

I am finding a new behavior, that was not present on the old animations. On the old as well as the new I have a single option selected "Return to original settings after animation ends"



It all worked at Halloween. I am running 2.0.2.8, at Halloween I was running 2.0.2.7. On the new animations, they will not run at all, either manually or from an event. If I deselect that box the animations will run both manually or from an Event, but when they are stopped, the lights are left in whatever color and intensity they were when the animation was stopped. At halloween, I could stop the animation and they would return to where they were.

The new bulbs have all been updated to the newest firmware and otherwise are working well. The animations also work as long as that option is not selected.

On another possibly unrelated item the "Continue after other HUE command" checkbox will not stick. I click on it and a checkmark shows and immediately disappears.

Did something in the plug-in change.

On an unrelated topic, is there any way I can vary the brightness of an animation, or must it be hard coded into the scenes? I would like to be able to start them at full brightness and reduce the brightness later in the evening. I thought of using a replacement variable or even writing the values with a script if a plug-in function is available to do so.

[randy]

Just to test, I backed up my system then went to a backup of 2.0.2.7 and copied it to my system. The behavior is still the same on both items. Now I really don't understand how it worked for Halloween.

I am back on 2.0.2.8.

Also, my old animations that were in place in October, the new ones I just built do not.

[w.vuyk]

Randy,

I will check it tonight at home.

As for dimming the animation, I might just add it as an action, where the whole animation goes down a setting, all lights go down the same setting, while not switching off?)
Not sure if I will manage this before Christmas due to all the changes already in the plugin now.

Challenge is that I am working on a major update for the plugin (mostly under the hood), so if I manage to do this before Christmas, it will be in beta..... 1st priortity is checking the checkbox for animation returning to old setting.

Wim

[randy]

I understand about the animations dimming being a future enhancement. While I was thinking about it last night, it occurred to me that dimming in annimations might be problematic unless it is relative. If an animation was composed of scenes with different brightness you wouldn’t want them to all be normalized with a single value. I was thinking it should be a value from 1-100%. That would be the multiplier for every scene in the animation. It would be (scene brightness * multiplier / 100). If the multiplier is 50 a scene that is normally at 254 would be 127 and a scene that would normally be 200 would be 100.

Ideally if the brightness could evaluate an expression (like Easy Trigger) we could use a replacement variable for a virtual device. You could use

$$DVR:(ref): 

or a formula such as

(254 * $$DVR:(ref): / 100) 

to keep levels relative.

The genesis of this is that you might want an animation at dusk to be brighter than at night.

[w.vuyk]

Randy,

I was thinking the same, dimming has to be relative to the settings of the scenes in the animation. Might include a first version in the second beta, want to release first beta this week and am finishing up the last tests for that. I will incorparate it as action in the plugin and add it as script command, not a replacement variable. the action will be (for now dim only) something like

If Time is 18:30
Then myAnimation dim 20% (could do the same for scenes I think)

This would eliminate the use of an extra virtual device, as I am mosty trying to avoid the need of virtual devices, rather have this as a function in the plugin.
This setting will last until the end of animation unless another dim command is send.


Also have tested the use of the return to original settings. It is all working here like normal. Also tried this with the infinit option set, but after the stop animation action, lights went back to original settings, like they should. Maybe post the details in the animations as well, so I can check if I missing something?
Also checked on the Continue after any Hue command, this option is cleared if you have the infinite option selected. Does your animation have this inifinite option set? The thought behind this was that this might help people to end a continous animation by changing a device. But I could enable to continue command I suppose?


Wim

[randy]

Randy,

I was thinking the same, dimming has to be relative to the settings of the scenes in the animation. Might include a first version in the second beta, want to release first beta this week and am finishing up the last tests for that. I will incorparate it as action in the plugin and add it as script command, not a replacement variable. the action will be (for now dim only) something like

If Time is 18:30
Then myAnimation dim 20% (could do the same for scenes I think)

This would eliminate the use of an extra virtual device, as I am mosty trying to avoid the need of virtual devices, rather have this as a function in the plugin.
This setting will last until the end of animation unless another dim command is send.


Also have tested the use of the return to original settings. It is all working here like normal. Also tried this with the infinit option set, but after the stop animation action, lights went back to original settings, like they should. Maybe post the details in the animations as well, so I can check if I missing something?
Also checked on the Continue after any Hue command, this option is cleared if you have the infinite option selected. Does your animation have this inifinite option set? The thought behind this was that this might help people to end a continous animation by changing a device. But I could enable to continue command I suppose?


Wim

A plug-in function to set scene and animation brightness to 1-100% (relative to settings coded in the scenes) would be perfect. This would allow us to set it to a lower brightness or restore it to the preset brightness. Then I would build scenes based on full brightness and adjust them with the function. I’m sure I could script a virtual device to send the appropriate value to the function.

I understand your thinking on Continue after any Hue command and it makes sense. Mine are infinite so the behavior is as expected. Leave it as is.

WRT my animations, I am at a loss. I have compared them to old animations which work and I cannot see any difference. If I have Return to original settings, the animation will not start, either manually from the config page or from an event. I even built an exact duplicate of a working animation and the duplicate will not run, but the original does.

I have no idea where to look, but I will experiment more. As soon as it gets dark I will try some more.

[randy]

Wim;

Here is all I can find. I have 2 animations, this is the older one. It will run from the config page or from an Event. When I stop it from an Event the lights return to where they were.


Here are the 4 scenes.




Here are the Events I use to launch and stop the animations. I enable and disable actions to change the animation I run



Here is a testy animation I just built. It will not run from the config page or from an Event, unless I deselect "Return to original settings after animation ends". When deselected the animation will run, but does not return the lights when stopped


Here are the 2 scenes





I enabled log to file and tried to run "Test" first which did not run and then "Christmas Sconce RG" which did run. Here is the short log.

(web_config.postBackProc) Debug: Config:File: checked
(web_config.postBackProc) Debug: Config:id: File
(plugin.HandleAction) Debug: HandleAction was called
(Animation.Execute) Debug: Execute: Animation Test with 2 steps and 1 different inner loops
(plugin.HandleAction) Debug: HandleAction was called
(plugin.HandleAction) Debug: Animation Test not running, skipped
(plugin.HandleAction) Debug: HandleAction was called
(Animation.Execute) Debug: Execute: Animation Christmas Sconce RG with 4 steps and 1 different inner loops
(Animation.Execute) Start of animation Christmas Sconce RG
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop: starting loop 0 from sequence 1 till 4
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop no 1 in loop 1
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop: Waittime: 5000 milliseconds 5:49:13 PM
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop: Waittime: 5000 milliseconds 5:49:18 PM
(HueTools.MainWatchTimer) Debug: Checking plugin health 12/5/2018 5:49:21 PM
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop: Waittime: 5000 milliseconds 5:49:23 PM
(Animation.ExecuteLoop) Debug: ExecuteLoop: Waittime: 5000 milliseconds 5:49:28 PM
(plugin.HandleAction) Debug: HandleAction was called
(plugin.HandleAction) Animation Christmas Sconce RG signaled to end
(Animation.Execute) Animation Christmas Sconce RG Finished

I cannot see anything different between the old one that works now that I built in September vs the new test animation I built.

[w.vuyk]

Randy,

Does not look like havng issues. Did you have the debug option set here? Or was this the detailed trace?
The only issue I could think of is that the saving of current settings is throwing an internal error, Looking at the code here it could skip the animation because of it. And this error is only reported in the detailed trace.
Could you start a detailed trace(with logging to file) and then run an animation that does not run anymore? After running the animation, disable the logging to file and detailed trace.
You will find a JowiHue.log in the Logs subdirectory.

Send this file to me at my private mail w dot vuyk at upcmail dot nl?

[randy]

Log sent

[w.vuyk]

Thanks! I added better error catching and think I also might have found/solved the issue here. If the error persists, the animation will still be executed, but becuase of this error, wil not return to the old setting. This will be mentioned in the log. I am hoping to publish the beta later today (here it is Thursday already...).

Thanks!

Wim

[randy]

Thanks! I added better error catching and think I also might have found/solved the issue here. If the error persists, the animation will still be executed, but becuase of this error, wil not return to the old setting. This will be mentioned in the log. I am hoping to publish the beta later today (here it is Thursday already...).

Thanks!

Wim

You’re welcome! And thank you as well.