Plugin-Device not showing in list of available devices for event trigger

[ee21]

This is probably something very trivial I am just overlooking, but I cannot seem to get any recently created Plugin-Devices, created using "a", to show up in the list of available devices when trying to trigger an event with "this devices changes and becomes..." - yet several older devices are right there. What needs to be set so I can use a Plugin-Device in an event trigger?

Here is my association page, the two devices I am looking at are BatterySaver, and Grid for this example.



Somehow BatterySaver is available as a trigger, yet Grid is not.. How can I fix that?


Other potentially useful info, the plugin-devices appear to be set exactly the same:


How they appear in the devices page:

[Michael McSharry]

I do not see anything wrong with the setup. What I would do next is is use the HS3 page (still using HS4) to look at the details of the two devices of interest. It would be http://<hsip>/deviceutility. Click on each of the two devices and look for differences of the properties, especially on the Advanced tab. Associated devices are a good candidate to compare to assure parent child types and relationships. This is an area that changed between HS3 and HS4. Another area that changed is the mandatory requirements for a Floor location, but it looks like you have that setup fine.

Having created the one that works in the past and the one that does not work more recently is also a potential clue depending upon the HS4 version used for each.

[ee21]

If memory serves, I think I created the devices which do show in an event trigger, before upgrading to HS4

HS3 Device Page:





BatterySaver (working):









Grid (not working - or just not available in an event trigger I should say):

[Michael McSharry]

Note that the relationship is Child for the new one and not set for the old one. On the new one the Associated device is not listed which implies to me that the parent device does not exist. Does it not exist because the plugin did not create it or because it was deleted to remove clutter? With later version of mcsMQTT I have been trying to force creation of a parent so it would behave the same as HS4. Can you provide any insight into this aspect of your process?

[ee21]

I did see that as well.. Would it not be best to just orphan the "Grid" device, since that is how the one that works is set? Not really sure how to do this even, rather new to HomeSeer still..

As far as initial creation goes, I definitely had some issues getting the device to appear in the first place. After manually adding a subscribe topic, I then went to Associations tab.. From here, if I recall, "a" was already checked, yet nothing was listed under "ref", so I unchecked "a" waited a couple seconds, and checked it again... Refreshed the page, and then it had a device listed under "ref". From there, I did pretty much nothing as far as configuration goes, other than assign a Room and a Floor.. There was only 1 entity in "Devices" when I went to look for the new one created, I certainly did not manually delete any parent devices, but maybe something in the process of unchecking and re-checking "a" did this?

[Michael McSharry]

I will play around with this concept later today so see what I can learn. It has been a long time since I manually created a subscription.

[ee21]

I've tried publishing a new topic from a broker, and no associations are automatically created, despite that being checked. Once I manually subscribe, status updates are processed..

[Michael McSharry]

For your original problem...

I have not tried to replicate yet, but we are proceeding based upon the premise that the child does not have a parent. You can go to the Edit tab, create a parent for grouping if you do not already have one you want to use, and then enter the ref number of that parent for the new device. This will create a valid parent/child relationship and then trigger should be available.

If you post your Config\mcsMQTT.ini file then I can see how you have setup for automatic associations. In general when automatic is selected there is also a template of which topics get automatically associated with HS devices.

[Michael McSharry]

I did evaluate the trigger and was able to get it to work by having a valid parent/child relationship. I did update the plugin to remove the option for creating devices without parent. I think it was forced, but perhaps there was a path that was not forced. It is at http://mcsSprinklers.com/mcsMQTT_5_2_9_0.zip. mcsMQTT_2020.dll goes in \bin\mcsMQTT folder. HSPI_MCSMQTT.exe goes in HS folder.

For issue of post #7 ...
Can you clarify what you are doing and expecting. A screenshot of General Tab, Inbound Managment section or a copy of \Config\mcsMQTT.ini will help with the understanding.

[ee21]

Sorry for the delayed response, had other priorities going on... Updates you made to the plugin seem to have helped, when new devices are created they are associated with a parent. With a bit of struggling I managed to associate old devices with a parent too using the edit tab.

This might be better of asked in a new thread, but was wondering now if you know how I can clean up the plugin devices, so they look more in line with other Z-Wave devices?


Trying to get PV Output to appear more like an energy metering device, that reads the value in Watts with a status graphic:


Edits to the Status Graphic on the plugin devices seem to be disabled by default however:
And Advanced device parameters don't seem to be editable on either Z-Wave or plugin devices that I can see, although am still new to HS4:

[Michael McSharry]

The Edit tab provides you the ability to change any of the device misc properties. For example to allow graphics display has a checkbox. The effect of these properties are different depending upon the type of control and if the device is status only. Change it on the Edit tab then go to Device Management to customize. Be aware that any change made on the Edit tab will overwrite any customizations that you made have done with the device so only start doing these in earnest after getting the Edit tab with what you want. This is because HS does not provide a plugin the means to read the VSP entries. It can only write them.

For presentation grouping the mechanism provided by the plugin is on the Edit tab which I suspect you already recognize. In HS4 the grouping is forced based upon the topic being the root and payload keys being the children of the group. The HS3 plugin now tries to organize the devices similar to what HS4 requires.

[mattster98]

I ran across this thread when searching for a related problem I was dealing with, and found the solution to be related as well. I created 3 associated devices and they have the same parent. The 3 child devices were assigned to a floor and room, but the parent (I didn't realize) was stuck on the original device name from MQTT. This caused several weird things to happen. Firstly, I thought I had no devices still mapped to the device name room and floor but it kept coming up in all the lists in the Homeseer UI. It also showed up on the HS Mobile app and showed no devices there.

All of these devices had the word "wall" in them, and in my attempts to find it in the HS Mobile app, I typed "wall" in the search and EVERY TIME the app would crash.

I finally went to the deviceutility page for the parent device and fixed the floor and room and voila, everything is showing up as expected. Clearly HS doesn't like when parents and children (devices) live separately.

[Michael McSharry]

Thanks for the heads up. I can understand the design difficulty with the HS4/HS Mobile orientation and having children scatter at various locations.