Support

[david.delano]

John (?) -

I posted to your website to start a conversation about some issues with the plugin and didn't hear anything back. I'm still evaluating the plugin, though will likely license it. I have some particular issues that need attention, and I need to communicate them sooner than later, or I'll forget what they are. Do you want to go through your web site, or here?

David

[simplextech]

Most support is done through the forums. I only have a contact form on the website. Is that what you used? I'm in process of setting up issue tracking for the plugins and there is a Slack channel setup with information in the main Simplex forum.

Anyways, what's up?

[david.delano]

Yes, I filled out the contact form.

Ok, I'll try to remember everything, but I can always add to the list if I leave something out.

When you first set up the devices in the plugin, you don't have any choice but to set up all your devices. You can always delete the ones you don't want, I guess, and I'm not sure the API has a way to add only one device. This is probably something to add as a warning. You click Create Devices, and there is no feedback that anything happened. I clicked four times before I gave up. I had created 16 devices (more on that later).

Homeseer gets sluggish with this plugin. With one set of devices and a poll rate of 5 minutes instead of 1 it isn't evident, but when I had 16 devices polled at 1 minute, HS3 on a PC was noticeably sluggish.

I had a Weatherbridge die, and replaced it with a new device. When I did that, I named the new one Northern Palms (new). When I had everything working correctly, I deleted Northern Palms, and renamed Northern Palms (new) to Northern Palms. The plugin created devices for both. The one that was actually getting data was the (new) one, even though it had been renamed. This is likely a problem on Ambient Weather's end, but be aware of it.

I like that on HS the device is grouped. On Mobile it is not. Everything is separate and interleaved. Don't know if you can do anything about it, but other device groups show up as groups (such as thermostats).

Once I got the extra devices deleted, everything named properly, and the polling to 5 minutes, things look good.

David

[randy]

I had a Weatherbridge die, and replaced it with a new device. When I did that, I named the new one Northern Palms (new). When I had everything working correctly, I deleted Northern Palms, and renamed Northern Palms (new) to Northern Palms. The plugin created devices for both. The one that was actually getting data was the (new) one, even though it had been renamed. This is likely a problem on Ambient Weather's end, but be aware of it.

This one is curious to me. I must be missing something. Since the devices post to Ambient by MAC address and the plug-in queries the ObserverIP by MAC address for local data and ambientweather.net for the devices not available locally, where did you rename the device?

[simplextech]

Yes, I filled out the contact form.

Ok, I'll try to remember everything, but I can always add to the list if I leave something out.

When you first set up the devices in the plugin, you don't have any choice but to set up all your devices. You can always delete the ones you don't want, I guess, and I'm not sure the API has a way to add only one device. This is probably something to add as a warning. You click Create Devices, and there is no feedback that anything happened. I clicked four times before I gave up. I had created 16 devices (more on that later).

When you first setup the plugin there is a list of devices that will be created. By default they are all selected. You can de-select any device you don't want before creation/adding the PWS. Those are the "child" devices. The only required device is the "Root" device which there will be 1 for each PWS you have in your AmbientWeather.Net account. You can also go into the plugin configuration at any time and de-select a device and choose "Update Devices". This will remove or add changes you make to the device selections.

Homeseer gets sluggish with this plugin. With one set of devices and a poll rate of 5 minutes instead of 1 it isn't evident, but when I had 16 devices polled at 1 minute, HS3 on a PC was noticeably sluggish.

What version of the plugin are you running?
What type of system are you running on?

The polling of AmbientWeather.Net is 1 HTTP call to retrieve the JSON data and then HS3 updating the devices. I have ran this on my primary system doing 15 second updates and the plugin itself has used up to 28% CPU during the device updates. This is running from a Pentium N4200 1.1Ghz processor. It barely even moves CPU my AMD system. However yes the device updates consumer CPU to perform the HS3 updates. You can reduce the number of devices you want to update or increase the polling time. If you want very fast updates with low CPU usage then doing local updates with an ObserverIP module is much less CPU intensive and updates the devices every 16 seconds. On my system this cuts the CPU to about 5% during the 16 second update cycle and around 12% at the 1 minute update. With all of that I'm always looking at ways to improve performance and I have been thinking of a few changes that I'll be testing to see if they make any improvements to the CPU usage.

I had a Weatherbridge die, and replaced it with a new device. When I did that, I named the new one Northern Palms (new). When I had everything working correctly, I deleted Northern Palms, and renamed Northern Palms (new) to Northern Palms. The plugin created devices for both. The one that was actually getting data was the (new) one, even though it had been renamed. This is likely a problem on Ambient Weather's end, but be aware of it.

I don't know how the WeatherBridge interfaces with AmbientWeather.Net. The AmbientWeather systems all connect/authenticate through their MAC Address and the "Name" is only a label. I only use the name from AmbientWeather.Net as the device label so there can be multiples with the same name but they are distinct devices within HS3. The HS3 devices use the MAC address of the PWS or ObserverIP as their identifier. Devices are updated based on their matching identifier (MAC) with what AmbientWeather.Net is providing. So depending on how/where you "renamed" a device it does not change the MAC address of the device. Does this make sense?

I like that on HS the device is grouped. On Mobile it is not. Everything is separate and interleaved. Don't know if you can do anything about it, but other device groups show up as groups (such as thermostats).

Unfortunately I don't know if I can do anything with how the devices show up in the new Mobile App. There has been very little plugin related documentation provided or information on what is needed to make plugins "friendly" for the mobile app. If there's something I need to change then once I know what that is I will roll that into an update.

Once I got the extra devices deleted, everything named properly, and the polling to 5 minutes, things look good.

David

I'm glad things got straightened out.

[simplextech]

This one is curious to me. I must be missing something. Since the devices post to Ambient by MAC address and the plug-in queries the ObserverIP by MAC address for local data and ambientweather.net for the devices not available locally, where did you rename the device?

This is confusing me as well, as the WeatherBridge (per AmbientWeather) does not work with Ambient Weather Wifi systems only with the other PWS systems and it can scrape the ObserverIP data.

[david.delano]

When I said device, I meant weather stations. When you "create" you can't select which parent device you want to create. It does all of them.

The rename was on the Ambient Weather side, and the web site. The plugin still thinks I have 4 weather stations, even though I deleted one, again on the Ambient Weather web site.

I am not using anything with local data, so ObserverIP is not coming into play. All the data is coming from the web site (which is how I'm able to get the Davis data).

I'm running HS3 on one of the original ASUS tablets. I'll have to get the specs, but it's reasonably powerful. I could do some experimenting to see what the load is. The lag was noticeable. Since I have 3 (and maybe 4) sets of PWS data being retrieved, could you stagger them? I'm assuming you are sending all of the requests out at the same time. Once you send out the request, are you waiting for the data, or can you timeout so that other tasks can run while you wait (I'm an embedded software developer/tester, so I deal with these kind of issues all the time).

Did I cover everything?

David

[simplextech]

I'm still not sure I understand all of what you are saying about having 4 of them created.

How many actual PWS's do you have?
How many are in AmbientWeather.Net Dashboard settings?

If you change things on AmbientWeather.net (delete) you will need to delete the original device created in HS3. Find the PWS root device that you removed in AmbientWeather.net and delete it in HS3. Deleting the root device will also remove all children. Changes in "name" or delete of devices on the AmbientWeather.Net system are not automatically pulled in by the plugin.

The original Asus Tablets are still a low end processor so CPU usage is going to be noticeable.

I need screen shots to understand what you are seeing and being pulled in. Provide some screenshots of the HS3 device listing and of AmbientWeather.Net devices. You can PM the info or you can join the Slack support channel and post information. I re-verified and the info@simplextech.net email address is now working correctly so feel free to email the screenshots and logs there to keep them out of public space.

[david.delano]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner.

I have 3 physical PWS, but at one point in time I had 4 PWS on Ambient Weather. I had a Weatherbridge die, and brought up a new and added it to Ambient Weather. I named the new PWS "Northern Palms (new)". When I got everything working, from Ambient Weather I deleted "Northern Palms" and renamed "Northern Palms (new)" to be "Northern Palms". At this point Ambient Weather displays 3 PWS.

It was at this state that I brought up the plugin. When it first imported the data, the plugin created 4 PWS, including "Northern Palms" and "Northern Palms (new)". I doubt this is something on your end, unless the API has a call to check the status of the PWS. The data was coming in on "Northern Palms", so that was actually correct. I deleted "Northern Palms (new)" and things are fine.

I was just letting you know this information 1) in case someone else runs into it and 2) in case there is something in the API that would allow you to ignore deleted PWS.

I agree that the ASUS tablet is weak by today's standards, but so far it has been sufficient for running HS3. This is the first time I've noticed an issue, and it was only when I'd accidentally created multiple copies of the PWS that I had problems. With the correct set of PWS created, things are fine. I use this tablet because I have it (I was in the process of deciding whether or not to decommission it when I decided to run HS3 on it), and it has a built in display. I will likely move to something else in the future. I also wanted to run my camera software (Blue Iris) on it, but that appears to be to intense for the processor.

I can't really give you any screen shots, as all is well now. I can probably reproduce the problem in I wipe out all the PWS devices and recreate them.

David

[simplextech]

The slow reply is fine. It means things are ok

I can understand the "deleted" one possibly showing up if when you removed it from AmbientWeather.Net and their backend wasn't updated before the plugin queried the API. If it still existed in the API records that would account for it being pulled in.

The plugin with all sensors active is a little heavy as that's (from memory) 20 sensors plus calculations for each PWS. I've done some work to improve CPU usage and as I find other areas that may help I try to improve it.

[david.delano]

Actually, it means either I'm really, really busy, or I finally got to take a few days off. Thankfully, it was the latter!!

I suspect it's something on their backend. I'd let them (Ed) know, but I've pretty much run into brick walls with trying to help them.

If you have anything you want to try, just let me know. I test software every day. And, I don't currently have any dependencies on the data, so I can delete everything and start over if I need to. I'd like the devices to all be grouped on the Mobile end, if you can ever figure that out, though I also like being able to hand pick the sensors I want. I have a mobile page called Weather that shows the temperature and daily rain total for all three PWS. Those are the important bits of information.

Now if we only had a snow/snow depth sensor/report.......that I could use.

David

[simplextech]

Actually, it means either I'm really, really busy, or I finally got to take a few days off. Thankfully, it was the latter!!

I suspect it's something on their backend. I'd let them (Ed) know, but I've pretty much run into brick walls with trying to help them.

If you have anything you want to try, just let me know. I test software every day. And, I don't currently have any dependencies on the data, so I can delete everything and start over if I need to. I'd like the devices to all be grouped on the Mobile end, if you can ever figure that out, though I also like being able to hand pick the sensors I want. I have a mobile page called Weather that shows the temperature and daily rain total for all three PWS. Those are the important bits of information.

Now if we only had a snow/snow depth sensor/report.......that I could use.

David

Having a day off is a good thing. That's my upcoming weekend I'm taking a few days off.

I can work with Ambient Weather if there's anything further needed. I talk with them a lot on other issues as they arise. The only way I can think of for testing this would be to have all 4 PWS's setup with AmbientWeather and query the API in a cycle and see how long it takes for the API to reflect the change when you delete one from the Ambient Weather Dashboard to see if there's a delay. I'm sure there is to some degree as the front end has to update the backend but I don't know how long of a delay it may be. It could be minutes for all I know.

As for the devices and mobile I've asked and the reply was they should group if they are parent/child relationships and they are. I've noticed in the latest mobile that I see a "Group" icon for the root that has lots of devices but I still see all of the individual children. I have noticed this on another plugin I'm working on as well that has lots of children. I've gone and double checked the parent/child relationships and they are all correct. So I'm really at a loss as this is only reflected in the mobile app and not the web interface.

Snow depth sensor? That's what my animals and kids are for. Watch them go into the snow and see which one vanishes

[david.delano]

I configured the plugin days after I'd deleted the renamed PWS, I think. I could be wrong, but I think if I recreate at this point I'll still get 4 PWS. Okay, had to test it. It creates both the old PWS name and the new one, AND they both appear to be getting the same data. Before, one was reporting zeros. Is there anything I can send you so that you can reproduce it? Key?

I don't think they quite have the mobile working exactly as it should. The parent/child show up just fine in the browser. Other plugins show up grouped, and you can either add the entire group or just one element/child. There is something they are neglecting to communicate.

I don't have children, but do have a grandson. In the winter I mount a snow gauge on the deck, and he is supposed to report to me, but rarely does!

I have a house in the mountains (the Amberwood PWS). My daughter's family lives there, but rarely report any useful data. There are heating strips on the roof edge, and I'd like to automatically turn them on/off. I can somewhat turn them on based on the weather report, and it's better to preheat them, but don't really have a way to know when they need to be turned off (there is a temperature limiter, but it's still a waste of electricity/$$ to keep them on when they aren't needed). It still baffles me that the PWS community doesn't have a sensor that does this. I've seen several attempts at one, but they all tend to be way too complicated. Have I come up with a simpler alternative? No, but I've thought a lot about it. I should note that the professional equipment is quite complicated, so difficult to mimic. I'd be happy just to know if there is standing snow or not.

David

[simplextech]

I configured the plugin days after I'd deleted the renamed PWS, I think. I could be wrong, but I think if I recreate at this point I'll still get 4 PWS. Okay, had to test it. It creates both the old PWS name and the new one, AND they both appear to be getting the same data. Before, one was reporting zeros. Is there anything I can send you so that you can reproduce it? Key?

I don't think they quite have the mobile working exactly as it should. The parent/child show up just fine in the browser. Other plugins show up grouped, and you can either add the entire group or just one element/child. There is something they are neglecting to communicate.

I don't have children, but do have a grandson. In the winter I mount a snow gauge on the deck, and he is supposed to report to me, but rarely does!

I have a house in the mountains (the Amberwood PWS). My daughter's family lives there, but rarely report any useful data. There are heating strips on the roof edge, and I'd like to automatically turn them on/off. I can somewhat turn them on based on the weather report, and it's better to preheat them, but don't really have a way to know when they need to be turned off (there is a temperature limiter, but it's still a waste of electricity/$$ to keep them on when they aren't needed). It still baffles me that the PWS community doesn't have a sensor that does this. I've seen several attempts at one, but they all tend to be way too complicated. Have I come up with a simpler alternative? No, but I've thought a lot about it. I should note that the professional equipment is quite complicated, so difficult to mimic. I'd be happy just to know if there is standing snow or not.

David

Take a look in your Ambient Weather.Net Dashboard in the devices section. If it only shows 3 then there's something up. Take a screenshot of that and PM it to me and if you don't mind your API key and I can hit the raw API and see if it's matching the Web UI and if not I'll send it over to Ambient Weather.

As for just "knowing" if there's snow. How about a camera? This is an interesting one I've never thought about...

[david.delano]

I've thought about a camera. I DO have one on the driveway, but it doesn't reflect the status of the snow on the roof. It also wouldn't automate anything.

My dashboard only shows the 3 current devices. I'm not good with screen shots and pasting, but I'll give it a go.




I'll PM you the key (assuming I can figure that out).

David