HC3 QuickApps coding - tips and tricks

[Neo Andersson 230]

16 minutes ago, jgab said:

Well, the message

Instantiating object Kiss Zoli Home (Netatmo Livingroom Module)_Temperature[21.10.2024] [09:21:37]

is not an error. It's just logged when it creates the Lua object from QwikAppChild

Yes but why? Every time i get the http response i am getting these logs..Shouldt this happen only when object is instantiated, so when I start or restart the QA?

[jgab 2,647]

13 minutes ago, Neo Andersson said:

Yes but why? Every time i get the http response i am getting these logs..Shouldt this happen only when object is instantiated, so when I start or restart the QA?

Yes only start/restart. When you call 

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Is your QA crashing and restarting?

Put a log message in the beginning of :onInit()

 

Edited October 21, 2024 by jgab

[Neo Andersson 230]

10 minutes ago, jgab said:

Yes only start/restart. When you call 

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Is your QA crashing and restarting?

Put a log message in the beginning of :onInit()

 

Okay, i think there is something with the logic..When HTTP fails, there is no data from where the myChildren table is created, there will be something linked to this..i will investigate deeper..thanks so far

[Neo Andersson 230]

@jgab Jan i am using your class QwikAppChild  for child device handling. I need to add battery interface to the parent device, but if I call

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it starts an infinit loop of instantiating my quickapp..

 

How to add battery interface to the parent?

 

 

Here is the rough logic of the code

 

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Edited December 20, 2024 by Neo Andersson

[Brors94 115]

1 minute ago, Neo Andersson said:

@jgab Jan i am using your class QwikAppChild  for child device handling. I need to add battery interface to the parent device, but if I call

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it starts an infinit loop of instantiating my quickapp..

 

How to add battery interface to the parent?

 

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I might be wrong  But it should only be called the first time the QA starts.
so if you can do a check before doing the self:addinterfaces you can avoid this?
Since it makes the QA restart everytime it adds a interface

Or if we can get a check on if the battery interface does exist on the parent device by api.get in and if statment 🤔
 

 

 

[Neo Andersson 230]

27 minutes ago, Brors94 said:

 

I might be wrong  But it should only be called the first time the QA starts.
so if you can do a check before doing the self:addinterfaces you can avoid this?
Since it makes the QA restart everytime it adds a interface

Or if we can get a check on if the battery interface does exist on the parent device by api.get in and if statment 🤔
 

 

 

Yes, probably you are right, but as this QA will be encrypted and installed on several systems, i cant do that hardcoding..There is some possibility i am sure, but thanks for the suggestions.

 

[jgab 2,647]

Yes, a QA restarts if you call addInterface.
Check if

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You can also check fibaroExtra's function QuickApp:addInterfaces(interfaces)

that is a more general approach.

Edited December 21, 2024 by jgab

[Neo Andersson 230]

On 2/6/2023 at 1:18 PM, jgab said:

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@jgab Jan, using Qwickapp class, i have created several sensors, and one bindary switch..Now i want to run some action when the switch is pressed, but i cant figure out how to define a function  of turnOn, and turnOf to the child binary switch. I was following your examplem above, but thats not what i should use, this is creating a metthod for the class itself, and not for the child..

Would you please assist a bit?

Edited December 21, 2024 by Neo Andersson

[jgab 2,647]

9 hours ago, Neo Andersson said:

@jgab Jan, using Qwickapp class, i have created several sensors, and one bindary switch..Now i want to run some action when the switch is pressed, but i cant figure out how to define a function  of turnOn, and turnOf to the child binary switch. I was following your examplem above, but thats not what i should use, this is creating a metthod for the class itself, and not for the child..

Would you please assist a bit?

Please use 

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[Neo Andersson 230]

5 hours ago, jgab said:

Please use 

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@jgab Jan, when i use this approach, itt will try to bind a trunOn function to every child device in my table..or not? Probably it will no harm nothing, as calling turnOn on a sesnsor will do nothing, but i am curious, is this the right approach?

 

This is my class, it should create 4 different child devices 

 

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and the i call in onInit like this

 

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and the goal is, that after the childs are created, i want to set some action for when user turns on that child switch. Also this question goes for the case when there are more child switches. User presses one of them, how will the class know which of them was pressed, and what action should be run inside that particular child's turnOn function..This is a bit that i need some explanation for to get it in the right way..Sorry

Edited December 22, 2024 by Neo Andersson

[jgab 2,647]

24 minutes ago, Neo Andersson said:

@jgab Jan, when i use this approach, itt will try to bind a trunOn function to every child device in my table..or not? Probably it will no harm nothing, as calling turnOn on a sesnsor will do nothing, but i am curious, is this the right approach?

 

This is my class, it should create 4 different child devices 

 

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and the i call in onInit like this

 

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and the goal is, that after the childs are created, i want to set some action for when user turns on that child switch. Also this question goes for the case when there are more child switches. User presses one of them, how will the class know which of them was pressed, and what action should be run inside that particular child's turnOn function..This is a bit that i need some explanation for to get it in the right way..Sorry

Well, it's no harm. The methods will be like QuickApp methods for the children. Like having a temperature sensor QA that has a function QuickApp:turnOn() method... not relevant, but no harm.

 

However, in general I would argue that you should have different child classes for different fibaro types. My experience is that the code actually becomes simpler as you don't need a lot of "if self.type == "com.fibaro.temperatureSensor" ...." etc in the generic ShellyWally_Class... Instead each child class does whatever it should do with the update data you send it.

Edited December 22, 2024 by jgab

[Neo Andersson 230]

7 minutes ago, jgab said:

Well, it's no harm. The methods will be like QuickApp methods for the children. Like having a temperature sensor QA that has a function QuickApp:turnOn() method... not relevant, but no harm.

 

However, in general I would argue that you should have different child classes for different fibaro types. My experience is that the code actually becomes simpler as you don't need a lot of "if self.type == "com.fibaro.temperatureSensor" ...." etc in the generic ShellyWally_Class... Instead each child class does whatever it should do with the update data you send it.

Okay, so i will keep it in one, like i have, but what whould we do if we had forexample 2 child binary switches..How would you differentiate them? Like if i will have Switch1 and Switch2 created as child in my ShellyClass. I want to call a http when Switch1 is pressed, and want to call another Http when switch2 is pressed. How ?

[jgab 2,647]

You give each child the data it needs to do its specific task.

Ex.
 

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Here I put that data in the same children table with the name, type, and class. You could also put it in another table.

Each child will have it's uid (the key in the children table) in the property self._uid.
Use that to look up the specific data that each binarySwitch needs to do its job...
 

Edited December 22, 2024 by jgab

[Neo Andersson 230]

36 minutes ago, jgab said:

Here I put that data in the same children table with the name, type, and class. You could also put it in another table.

Each child will have it's uid (the key in the children table) in the property self._uid.
Use that to look up the specific day that each binarySwitch needs to do it's job...

@jgab Jan, this is throwing error..

 

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but thats not true. The device exists..

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Sorry, found the problem. myChildren table was local..that was the reason i think

 

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by Neo Andersson

[jgab 2,647]

You can't declare myChildren locally in createMyChildren() and expect to access the variable in function ShellyWalli_Class:__init(device)...

Look how I forward declared the variable in my example.

 

So the child's initial method crashed and it was not created and couldn't be found when the QA tried to lookup the child in it's self.childDevices table - therefore the error message you got (even if the device structure existed in the UI list)

Edited December 22, 2024 by jgab

[Neo Andersson 230]

14 minutes ago, jgab said:

You can't declare myChildren locally in createMyChildren() and expect to access the variable in function ShellyWalli_Class:__init(device)...

Look how I forward declared the variable in my example.

 

So the child's initial method crashed and it was not created and couldn't be found when the QA tried to lookup the child in it's self.childDevices table - therefore the error message you got (even if the device structure existed in the UI list)

Thanks Jan, meanwhile i have found the problem, so i did update my topic right away..thank you

[Neo Andersson 230]

@jgab Jan, there is a bit more challenging task here. Can we create a child device of type thermostat? 

Probably not..

So the goal is, after I crated the child sensor and child switch i need to create a child (or not child if its not possible) thermostat device that will consist from my previously created sensor and switch.

Is this task even doable?

This is probably a noway task, because in the swagger i can see, that the thermostat has no dedicated parameter for sensor and heating switches..All the devices are in one parameter named devices, so this makes it even more challenging..

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by Neo Andersson

[jgab 2,647]

Yes you can create thermostat child. Why not?
It's quite common that when you try to map an external device to fibaro's device types you need to represent the device with several fibaro types. Ex. Hue or Ikea motion sensor are typically also temperature and lux sensors so a single motion device need to be represented as 3 fibaro types (children), com.fibaro.motionSensor, com.fibaro.tempratureSensor, com.fibaro.lightSensor.

In theory we could create 1 child of type motion sensor and the add the new "custom UI" for children to show the temperature and lux value together with the motion value. However, that "combined" device would not be easily used from ex. block scenes as they would see it as just a motion sensor.... there is also no good place to store the other values (temp and lux) in the device property structure so we need to put it in ex. quickvars...

If it's just that you need extra UI switches (and methods) you could get away with adding a custom UI with those extra buttons for the thermostat. Alternatively, create separate binary switch children representing those switches (and give the children similar names so that one understand that they belong together)

 

I think that thermostats have selector for cooling/heating/echo etc and some kind of slider for the value?

[Neo Andersson 230]

47 minutes ago, jgab said:

Yes you can create thermostat child. Why not?
It's quite common that when you try to map an external device to fibaro's device types you need to represent the device with several fibaro types. Ex. Hue or Ikea motion sensor are typically also temperature and lux sensors so a single motion device need to be represented as 3 fibaro types (children), com.fibaro.motionSensor, com.fibaro.tempratureSensor, com.fibaro.lightSensor.

In theory we could create 1 child of type motion sensor and the add the new "custom UI" for children to show the temperature and lux value together with the motion value. However, that "combined" device would not be easily used from ex. block scenes as they would see it as just a motion sensor.... there is also no good place to store the other values (temp and lux) in the device property structure so we need to put it in ex. quickvars...

If it's just that you need extra UI switches (and methods) you could get away with adding a custom UI with those extra buttons for the thermostat. Alternatively, create separate binary switch children representing those switches (and give the children similar names so that one understand that they belong together)

 

I think that thermostats have selector for cooling/heating/echo etc and some kind of slider for the value?

In my case the biggest challange is, that the child thermostat should be created in a way so its sensor will be the child sensor (created by my QA) and the switch (also created by my QA)..this is very challenging, and i think even impossible, thats why i raised this question..

 

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[Neo Andersson 230]

@jgab yeah and here is the cherry on the cake..

 

Creating a thermostat type child device will end up in a device without any UI control...oh ...Fibaro...Neither in web UI nor in mobile app...

Tried with all available types, 

com.fibaro.hvacSystemAuto,

com.fibaro.hvacSystemHeat,

com.fibaro.hvacSystemCool

 

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So this is another dead end.