EasyTrigger vs HS4 Event engine

[hiken]

I currently have EasyTrigger but don't heavily use it. I recently moved to HS4. The events are finicky and generally unreliable. Sometimes my events will skip a step. Sometimes they do not run at all Can EasyTrigger be used for run-of-the-mill events such as: Set a group of 20 devices to dim when an HS Touch button is pressed? Or is it just a schedule-based function? Has everyone found it to be more reliable than the native event engine? Should I invest time into it since it is still in Beta? Thanks!

*** A message to the plugin developer: I do not expect anything for free. I hope you develop a native HS4 plugin and put it up for sale. I would be the first to purchase it.

[Wade]

Easytrigger isn't an alternative to the HS event engine. It adds capabilities and conveniences. It sounds like one issue you might be experiencing is controlling a relatively large number of devices in a single event, with one or more devices not properly receiving the command. In this case EasyTrigger group function could be helpful. There is an option to only send a command only if it results in a new device value, thereby reducing number of commands on the network. Individual commands can also be spaced by user-defined duration in seconds.

[Guest]

When I have an event the effects many devices, I usually put in a few second "wait" event after every 5 or so devices. This allows the ZWave plugin to catch up. Otherwise some of the actions could get lost in the noise.

[hiken]

Thank you for the responses. I will first try inserting a wait time. When I upgraded to HS4, I bought a new box with 10 zillion times the specs and power. I thought that would be the end of any event issues. But it seems like the same or more glitchy events. I do have some events like my "Good Night" event that control up to 30 devices at once.

[rmasonjr]

You may have already done this, but maybe break the 30 devices into rooms, then have each room have an on/off event:
Living Room On
Living Room Off
Kitchen On
Kitchen Off
etc.

Then, in your goodnight event, just run those events, maybe pausing between.

[TC1]

Thank you for the responses. I will first try inserting a wait time. When I upgraded to HS4, I bought a new box with 10 zillion times the specs and power. I thought that would be the end of any event issues. But it seems like the same or more glitchy events. I do have some events like my "Good Night" event that control up to 30 devices at once.

The CPU power of the platform HS4 is running on has nothing to do with it, it's the processing speed of the Z-wave mesh, which is dependent on the size of the network, ie, how many devices and how the z-wave controller deals with queue processing. As others have pointed out, trying to control a large number of Z-wave devices at once can be problematic since the HS4 event engine is multithreaded and will try to send all the commands as quickly as possible. The Z-wave network then has to deal with collisions and retries.

[randy]

I have seen problems where sending 20-30 simultaneous device actions can cause missed commands. In my very busy system it would be a rare occurrence. Easy Trigger groups solve this with two mechanisms. First it checks the status of a Device and only sends a command if the status will change. The second will delay each command sent to a group Device. I use 1 second.

[John245]

spud is it also possible to add "send command only if expression results in a new value"

In my use case this save me an AND IF.

randy this gives me inspiration. However it was not available for single events (so I don't missed it when I added all my AND IF's)
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John