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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Z-Wave
Changing device settings via flows (when not available in flow cards...)
cbh
Member
Hi,
is there some kind of work-around or tweak that makes it possible to change specific settings for a device as part of a flow, if that setting is not available as flow card?
Know it sounds a bit tricky, but will try to illustrate:
Setup:
A Powernode 6 with one socket connected to the power supply for a Roomba
Task
When charging the Roomba has finished (and power consumption drops) the socket should be turned of to avoid standby consumption.
Problem
The Powernode 6 is "old" z-wave (not z-wave plus) and does not report status to Homey spontaneously - reports are only sent in response to Homey polling the device (with a few exceptions, in this case relative power changes, though).
If for some reason you want detailed information from the device it is necessary to decrease poll intervals which in turn increase traffic load.
However, this detailed information is only needed for a certain (short) time frame under defined and controlled circumstances, e.g. a few hours every day right after the last person left the house. The rest of the day, no information at all is needed and frequent polling will increase traffic load for no reason.
If the specific parameter in question for the device could be manipulated as part of a flow, in this the parameter stating the polling interval, the polling interval could be set to very frequent during the time needed and when the task is finished, the polling state could be changed to something less frequent.
Solution???
For some devices, e.g. Fibaro Dimmer 2, some parameters can be manipulated by flow cards, e.g. setting "Forced brightness".
However, if the app developer didn't include a flow card to manipulate a specific paramter, this is of course not possible.
Is it possible to send some kind of generic command to change a specific parameter, e.g. sending a "raw configuration" command to a device, in case a flow card is not available?
is there some kind of work-around or tweak that makes it possible to change specific settings for a device as part of a flow, if that setting is not available as flow card?
Know it sounds a bit tricky, but will try to illustrate:
Setup:
A Powernode 6 with one socket connected to the power supply for a Roomba
Task
When charging the Roomba has finished (and power consumption drops) the socket should be turned of to avoid standby consumption.
Problem
The Powernode 6 is "old" z-wave (not z-wave plus) and does not report status to Homey spontaneously - reports are only sent in response to Homey polling the device (with a few exceptions, in this case relative power changes, though).
If for some reason you want detailed information from the device it is necessary to decrease poll intervals which in turn increase traffic load.
However, this detailed information is only needed for a certain (short) time frame under defined and controlled circumstances, e.g. a few hours every day right after the last person left the house. The rest of the day, no information at all is needed and frequent polling will increase traffic load for no reason.
If the specific parameter in question for the device could be manipulated as part of a flow, in this the parameter stating the polling interval, the polling interval could be set to very frequent during the time needed and when the task is finished, the polling state could be changed to something less frequent.
Solution???
For some devices, e.g. Fibaro Dimmer 2, some parameters can be manipulated by flow cards, e.g. setting "Forced brightness".
However, if the app developer didn't include a flow card to manipulate a specific paramter, this is of course not possible.
Is it possible to send some kind of generic command to change a specific parameter, e.g. sending a "raw configuration" command to a device, in case a flow card is not available?
Tagged:
Comments
However, if there is some shortcut (like it's possible to make a formula in Better Logic) that made it possible to just fill in the node id and config parameters it would be nice (a feature request for a card like that will appear on GitHub soon