Grouping of devices

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#1

Hello,
I saw that the openhab binding in the current version is now supporting homematic groups which will make handling a lot easier for me. Also I saw that homegear should also allow grouping. But I could not find any references about how to create groups and how to add a device to a group. Is there somewhere a guide in how to handle this?

best,
Freggel

#2

Hello Freggel,

groups are not supported yet. But there will be group support within the next two months :wink:!

But you can create a virtual device which then acts as the group. Let’s say the virtual device is named “ALL LIGHTS” and has a parameter “STATE” (or “LEVEL”), then you can use “addEvent” to check for changes of that variable and when the variable changes, execute a Skript, which switches all the lights you want (or do even more complex things). If you want to do that, I can post a detailed howto - when documented it is a little work but not really complicated.

Cheers,

Sathya

#3

Hy Sathya,
thanks for your quick reply. Before causing work on your side let me shortly explain what I’m going to reach. Not sure if your solution will help me. I would like to solve 2 issues by using groups.

  1. When I switch a lot of actors one after another, I have to sleep for around 250ms between each action in openhab to be pretty sure that all devices will react properly. Otherwise some of them will be left on. We do have around 45 actors do be switched off. To be really sure that this works, I currently trigger this action a second time. This seems to work pretty good, but leads to 250452=22,5 seconds of execution time. I wonder if homegear can do this job more efficient. I was hoping that using groups will make homegear handling this better than I can do from openHab.

  2. And the second point is, that I would like to reduce the lines of code in the scripts. We have 45 actors to be switched off by one rule in openHab, every command needs a second “sleep” command. Which does mean 2*45=90 lines of code for this rule. By adding an actor to one or more groups, I will save a lot of lines. Using your idea of virtual devices seems just to move the problem to another script located in homegear. Please correct me, if I’m wrong :slight_smile:

In CCU1 I could use virtual switches for having direct links between the actors which were executed almost simultaneously. All lights switched off at the same time. That would be the perfect solution :slight_smile:

Curious to here your thoughts about :slight_smile:

best,
Freggel

#4

I just checked, there is sadly no group command :cry:. The CCU sends the packets to one device after the other:

A0B74A4402120002A0C94010A
A0E7480022A0C942120000101C80045
A0B74A04021200027775A010A
A0E74800227775A2120000101C80040

I can’t tell you, why it was faster.

No. Without the delay there would probably be a communication mess.

No, you’re correct. To reduce the amount of code we need groups…

Cheers,

Sathya

#5

Any news on groups :stuck_out_tongue:
Couldn’t find any information.

#6

No, not yet :unamused:…

#7

Still no good news on groups?

I have another idea of a workaround. I’m very much new to homegear, but I run it integrated to openHAB and have already like 12 deviced running over cul/bidcos.

The three latest are smoke detectors. Two of them I paired before pairing them to homegear. The group appeared in openHAB as soon as I paired the second detector.

Then I tried to join the group with the third detector (paring between devices) , to no avail (I expected that).

Then I registered the third detector to homegear. Successfully. Another group appeared, which had only this device in it. I assume the group was created, when I tried to pair the third to the second detector.

Then I tried to find a group command in homegear. Ooops. Then I found this thread in the forum.

Now my idea is: Unpair (and reset to factory settings) all three smoke detectors. Then pair them to a single group. Then re-pair them with homegear. Would you think this has a chance of working?

I tried to unpair the third detector first. It blinked a bit, but stayed in the peer list. How can I see which devices are unpaired correctly? I fear to somehow spoil the whole thing to a state which is unrecoverable (or: unrecoverable with homegear/cul).

Any hints?