Commands, states and comparators in experimental rules engine

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

I’ll start with the caution that “Experimental” is in the name for a reason. It is not complete and only available for experimental use and testing. There is no documentation and it is not feature complete.

@Eseraz

Concerning the trigger, I am slightly confused, that i have to set a state at all, since I would expect, that any evaluation of the actual temperature would take place in the conditions part of the rule.

You don’t have to provide the State. Just leave it blank.

@Eseraz

Even more confusing is that none of the given states make sense for a state of a temperature.

You can type in the state for String and Number states. So if you did want to trigger when the temp gets to a specific number just type in that Number.

The UI needs some work.

@Eseraz

When adding the action, I would expect that the available commands depend on the given item. So if I select my light bulb, I can send something like hue = 200, saturation = 20, brightness = 254. Or just ON/OFF which is already available. I would not expect the types OPEN/CLOSED, UP/DOWN.

For a Color you can use 200,20,254 as the command.

As for the rest, the UI needs some work.

@Eseraz

Now at last when adding the condition, I would expect a different operator depending on the item I chose. For Date and Time I would rather expect operators like BEFORE/AFTER/EQUALS. And instead of the 6 given states, I would expect an item that lets me chose a time.

Time operations and I’d venture to say DateTime Items are not yet fully supported.

@Eseraz

Do I understand this correctly, that the triggers have been designed that way, so they dont trigger the rules as often as they would without any evaluation of the state of the item?

They are not designed that way. The state is optional in the triggers so you can reproduce Rule triggers like one uses in the Rules DSL along the lines of Item MyItem received command ON. Leave it blank and the Rule will trigger for all commands, not just the one defined.

@Eseraz

Would it be possible to add a feature, that the UI gives you better command options for the actions?
So for example I click on the command SET_STATE when I selected my bulb and then I can set the parameters for the bulb as RGB or HSI values?

Probably. It’s still a work in progress, experimental. I don’t know what is planned for or what needs to be requested. It wouldn’t hurt to create an Issue over at Eclipse Smarthome.

@Eseraz

Would it be possible to have dynamic operators for different item types for better comparison?

ibid

@Eseraz

Would it be possible to dynamically change the type of the compared state? So when i want to compare a date_time value, i get to enter another date_time value in the compared state using a time picker like in the “it is a fixed time of day”-trigger option.

ibid

@Eseraz

I found a lot of types in the org.eclipse.smarthome.core.library.types package. Are those the ones used for the default options?

Probably

@Eseraz

Where could I change which options are given by default?

Don’t know if you can.

@Eseraz

and I would really apreciate your help

Beyond what I’ve mentioned above all I can offer is that the documentation for the Experimental Next-Gen Rules Engine was essentially started two days ago. I don’t think anyone on this forum really knows how this all works yet and it is very important to realize that it is not done being developed.

Experimental Next-Gen Rules Engine Documentation 1 of : Introduction

This tutorial post is very out of date and ultimately did not make it into the official docs. Do not use this except for historic purposes. See the Getting Started Tutorial sections on rules for how to get started with rules. Rules - Introduction | openHAB EDIT: This is getting too long for one posting. I’ve split it up (thanks @ysc’s write-up for HABot for giving me the idea). This is a series of postings to start writing and gathering what we know works and what doesn’t yet work in the Rul…