Using Alarm Devices in Events

[sparkman]

Hi Philippe,

I'm just finishing migrating all of my SB events from HS2 to HS3. I have some events that alert me if "Alarm 1" gets deleted/cleared from some of my Squeezebox Radios.

My understanding is that the value 0 in one of the 4 alarm devices indicates that the alarm is not used. I've created an event that is to trigger when Alarm 1 changes to 0. However, when I use that value, HS interprets the 0 as the existing alarm. See the screen shots for what I mean. The first screen shot is with the event expanded so you can see the "0" is selected and then the second screen shot is with the event collapsed, it shows the title of the alarm, rather than "No Status". Also, when looking at the Alarm Device's "Status Graphic" tab, I get the error below, which may be related to the problem. Thoughts on how to resolve?

Thanks
Al

[sparkman]

Hi Philippe,

A further update. Even though the event does not display properly, it still works as needed.

Thanks
Al

[pcp]

The error is not normal. Are the device graphics/pairs missing? Have you tried to delete and recreate the player devices? I will try to re produce this.

[sparkman]

The error is not normal. Are the device graphics/pairs missing? Have you tried to delete and recreate the player devices? I will try to re produce this.

Thanks Philippe, I'll delete one of my players as a test to see if it recreates them properly. I don't believe any images are missing. I have 81 files in my \images\squeezebox directory and all of the images are properly displayed on the main device pages, just not the tab.

Thanks
Al

[sparkman]

Ok, disabled the plugin, deleted one of my players, re-enabled the plugin and the devices were re-created for that player. However, I still have the same issue with it.

Thanks
Al

[pcp]

Thanks Philippe, I'll delete one of my players as a test to see if it recreates them properly. I don't believe any images are missing. I have 81 files in my \images\squeezebox directory and all of the images are properly displayed on the main device pages, just not the tab.

Thanks
Al

hmm... I will look into it and see if I can reproduce it. It might be worth posting (or Bugzilla) for the HST folks as well since the error (on the Status Graphics tab) is within HS3. Somehow HS3 get's lost with the status / graphics pair definitions.

[sparkman]

Thanks Philippe,

A somewhat related issue with these events. I've had these events running under HS2 for quite a while. They work great, except when the plugin and/or HS restarts, the events get triggered. I was hoping that under HS3, they would not exhibit this behavior, but I noticed this morning when I disabled/re-enabled the plugin that they get triggered as well. I'm assuming the value is set to 0 on startup of the plugin before it retrieves the info from the SB server and then updates the device with the actual value. Would it be possible to change the behavior of the plugin to not set them to 0 first?

Thanks
Al

[pcp]

updates... I was able to reproduce the error on the "Status Graphics tab" but based on the specs I add I don't understand why this could occur. taking into account making it easier to write events and trigger on specific event states (instead of values of 0, etc) I found a way to restructure the status pairs and still support dynamic text (for the alarm dates/time); you will be able to write events matching states against states (Enable, Snooze, etc...) without having to care about the specific values. I will include the change in the next update, though will require that you recreating the player devices (easy from the plug-in status page)

[sparkman]

Great, thanks Philippe. So that means un-checking the HS3 checkbox for each of the devices and then re-checking them later? Will events for each of the players need to be redone or will they automagically remap to the new devices (assuming their name stays the same)?

Any thoughts on the event triggering at plugin startup?

Thanks
Al

[pcp]

So that means un-checking the HS3 checkbox for each of the devices and then re-checking them later? Will events for each of the players need to be redone or will they automagically remap to the new devices (assuming their name stays the same)?

Yes unchecking/checking the players in the plug-in status page is all you need (and what I do in my testing); new devices will have the new pair definitions. Not sure about events but could be they have to be edited as device refs might change. Will this be acceptable if it turns out you need to edit the events?

Any thoughts on the event triggering at plugin startup?
Al

I plan to look into this before release. Not sure yet.

[sparkman]

Will this be acceptable if it turns out you need to edit the events?

No problem, it'll only take a few minutes to run through them all.

I plan to look into this before release. Not sure yet.

Thanks! HS3 is now really stable for me, so it's not a large issue for me, but every time it does need to be restarted, the event triggers, and it then creates a new alarm on the affected SB radios. If you can think of any work arounds, that would be great too.

Thanks
Al

[pcp]

If you want to test the current changes (including for the alarms from this thread), check http://board.homeseer.com/showpost.p...2&postcount=30

[sparkman]

Hi Philippe,

Overall looks great. A couple of minor issues remain:

• The events related to the alarm changes still contain the name of the current alarm that's associated when it's selected with the Unknown. See screen shot below. Not a big deal as it works, but it may confuse someone.
• A restart of the plugin still causes the event below to get triggered. Not sure if you had tried to address that in this version of the plugin.
• On the initial startup of the updated plugin and the recreation of the devices, only the first 3 alarm devices got created for each of the 9 SB players that I have. All other devices were properly created. A subsequent restart caused the 4th alarm devices to be created. Not sure what happened the first time, but I did have a few errors in my log the first time ("Posting back to plugin web page squeezebox_status: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." and "Getting plugin GenPage: Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

Thanks for the great support.

Cheers
Al

PS I have one more feature request, would it be possible to show the Player Number in the SqueezeBox Plugin Status page (/squeezebox_status)?

[pcp]

Thank you for your testing and feedback. I have not made any changes to accomodate for "A restart of the plugin still causes the event below to get triggered.".... on my todo list and also added to look into "show the Player Number in the SqueezeBox Plugin Status page (/squeezebox_status)?"

[sparkman]

Great, thanks!