Recent updates (Spring 2017) have allowed using Thing Status Info changes in rules. I was able to use these new features to fix a lighting problem in my Frankenhouse (the light switch only controlled 1 electrical outlet, the others are always on). Using hue lights with the below rules, I now have lights responding to the physical switch (where they weren’t responding before).
Note: that there can be a delay of about a minute between flipping the switch, and having all the lights turn on / off.
Note: You’ll need to pull the thing’s id from Paper UI (or from /userdata/logs/events.log).
rule "Turn on/off Library light"
when
Thing "hue:0210:288baea3:6" changed
then
var status = ThingAction.getThingStatusInfo("hue:0210:288baea3:6").getStatus()
//logError("Debug", "Library Rules | " + status)
if (status.toString() == 'OFFLINE')
{
//logError("Debug", "Attempting to turn off light")
Library1_Brightness.sendCommand(OFF)
}
else {
Library1_Brightness.sendCommand(ON)
}
end
The Thing status is detected but it is not working all the time
In the stable OH version I was able yo follow the Online/Offline status in the Thing section and it worked very responsive … doing the same now in the latest Snapshot I have delays in the Online/Offline status in the Thing section.
Its a step in the right direction but not working reliable
I am using this with my Z-Wave bulb and here the Thing is only going OFFLINE if the gateway tries to contact the bulb but it didn’t answer within 10 seconds.
If I don’t send any commands at all to the bulb after cutting the power, it stays ONLINE until the gateway tries to pull a status from it (which is every 10 minutes in my setup). So this is very expected and correct behaviour IMHO.
I have a dimmable Z-Wave bulb in a simple relay-microwave-lamp, so it will cut the power when there is nobody in the room. I use the ONLINE OFFLINE state to detect presence in that room and power on/off the wall panels.
I haven’t looked into that use case at all. If there is a way to get all of your thing’s ids then I suppose you could do it in a loop. Note that I’m still relatively new to openHab, and am hacking my way through problems as I run into them.
There is definitely a delay between the online/offline switch, and the responsiveness of the rule. In my brief testing I’ve seen it take up to 1 minute before the second light responds … which was good enough for my purposes.
I am not sure if you have to prepend the ThingAction part in front of the getThingStatusInfo(...) method call. The documentation doesn’t use it (see http://docs.openhab.org/addons/actions.html#thing-status-action). It is also recommended to check for null on the getThingStatusInfo(...) result before trying to access the real status value.
I did an in-depth analysis of the reliability of the Thing status of hue bulbs by comparing the Thing status with a regular call of the Hue bridge. From the Hue bridge, I got the JSON description of the bulbs and their status. Of the 26 bulbs I have installed, at least two or three have a wrong status: the Thing shows online, while according to the Hue Bridge / JSON the bulb is not reachable. Given this, I am not sure how I could help solving the problem. Maybe with the script I created for this analysis?
were you able to solve the delay problem in the meanwhile?
I am trying to dim my hues after turning them on using the physical switch. Using your ruleset I am able to have my physical switches in sync with the virtual switch Items.
But the delay is a problem. Turning the lights on at night in full brightness and having to wait ages until the rules are executed and the lights dimmed down is pretty useless.
