About HC3 polling intervals

[Bernhard Stockman 1]

Hello,

I have some Qubino smart meters and would like to get the power values from these. As far as I understand (beeing a newbee) polling could be done in three different ways

defined in the device advanced settings.

1. Polled att periodic intervals with specified polling time

2. Using the global polling queue

3. Exclude from polling (but using e.g. triggers)

 

Tried to figure out the details about this but nothing mentioned in Fibaro manuals like Home Center 3 manual or Lua Scenes manual so I did some experiments with all

three methods. (in case 3 I used a scene where the condition allways = true). The result:

 

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In the first case I have marked the 300 seconds polling with green. Obviously there are pollings done outside of the 300 second period. Have no idea why.

In the second case the polling delay varies a lot from 10 seconds to over 5 minutes. Have no idea why? Besides the Qubino Smart Meter I onloy have a

Fibaro Wall Plug so the load on the HC3 can not be that large.

In the third case the delay is mainly between 10 to 50 seconds so obviously this is the fast method. I guess that delays time may increase when

you add more scenes with isTrigger = true.

 

Conclusion. Compared to HC2 the HC3 misses a lot when it comes to displaying consumption. As a consequence you will have to do

a lot yourself. For this to work you need good and detailed documentation. Unfortunately that seems not to be the case e.g. when it

comes to the condition statements in scenes. I would like to have a detailed description of all possibel operators that can be used in conditions

and how they work. I have searched a lot but not found any such document.  I have of course found a lot of specific solutions in this forum

where a variety of operators have been used but no general and complete description of what is possible to do.

 

If some Fibaro people in Wysogotowo read this it would be nice to hear if there are any plans for a more detailed and througout documentation

of the HC3 software. By the way, I assume the OS of the HC3 is some Unix variant as times are given as seconds from 1970. It would also

be nice to see the HC3 software upgrade plan (if any exists) and what these upgrades are planned to contain.

 

Regards,

Bernhard Stockman

 

[RH_Dreambox 182]

Hi Bernhard

Polling is not intended to be used in that way. Polling is used by HC3 to internally update and read the devices.
All you have to do is create a scene or QuickApp that reads Qubino's (device ID) "power". Then you can read the value of the device for example every minute.

I assume you found this information.

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[Bernhard Stockman 1]

Thanks for your answer. Not sure what you mean by "Polling is not intended to be used this way". In the device advanced section there are these configuration options.

As I mentioned, I miss the beautiful consumption interface from HC2 but realize that I can do something similar in a web-page using the REST API. For this reason I will

need a bunch of data from HC3 and that is easily got. For example using this code

 

energy = api.get("/energy/now-30600/now-11760/summary-graph/devices/power/21")

print("Index = "..#energy)

for i=1,#energy do

    ts = energy[i][1]

    val = energy[i][2]

    print(os.date("%H:%M",(ts/1000)),val .. "W")

end

 

Here I am getting data from one of my three Qubino Smart Meters. (I have one Smart Meter for each phase being 3 in Sweden). When I started to do this

on all the three meters I got different values on the #energy i.e. they are polled different amount of times. That made me curious if I could control the

amount of pollings done. As my intial message shows that seems not possible. 

 

When you say I can read the value every minute, if I understand you correctly, you e.g. mean using a date/cron trigger that triggers once a minute. 

To have any usage of this the internal polling time of the device should be not more than one minute otherwise you would have the same value

displayed until next polling.

 

I have looked at the home center 3 lua scenes, but it is very rudimentary and does not go into the hairy details of e.g. conditions.

Have not started with QuickApps yet but will ?

[wienog 107]

On 11/16/2020 at 11:56 AM, Bernhard Stockman said:

Thanks for your answer. Not sure what you mean by "Polling is not intended to be used this way". In the device advanced section there are these configuration options.

 

What is meant is that polling is almost always useless and can be set to "no polling" for every device. 99 % of modern devices communicate their data with the controller automatically and don't wait till they are 'polled' by the controller. That used to be the 'old' method: the device just waited till it was polled and then sent it's data.
As said, that is not the case anymore and many users shut polling off completely for all their devices, to minimize useless data-traffic.

That does not mean however that you can not have influence on the frequency the device is ending it's data to the controller (WITHOUT being polled !!).

Most of the time you can set a time interval for reporting or you can set a minimum % of change since the last value before the new data are sent to the controller.

This is - of course- a much more bandwith-economic method than polling which can send ten, twenty or 100 times the same information as, for instance, that there is no wind outside. Better to be warned when there was no wind and now there is.

[Bernhard Stockman 1]

Regarding the Polling time interval setting in the advanced section of Devices.

 

As mentioned above I have tried all settings of this like:

 

Device excluded from polling. Result - the devices are stilled being polled with around 1-2 minutes intervalls

Device uses global polling queue.  Result - the devices are being polled with around 1-2 minutes intervalls

Device will be polled at periodic intervals. Interval set to 300 sec. Result - the device is being polled at the set intervall as well as inbetween these intervalls

 

As mentioned above by RH_Dreamwork the polling interval should not be changed as these are used internally by the HC3. Then the question of course is why this configuration options is available in the Advanced device window. 

 

Maybe the solution has to do with what wienog mentions above. Most today devices are sending their values automatically and no polling from the HC3 is needed.

That would explain e.g. when setting a polling interal to 300 sec, the device is being polled at that rate but it also sends its data by itself so I get both 300 sec data and intermediate data.

 

I'll will disable HC3 polling for my energy devices and see what happens.

[Bernhard Stockman 1]

So I have run the energy meters with Device excluded from polling for a while and the result is confusing.

I have three Qubino Smart meters, one for each phase (three phase system in Sweden). From phase 1

in one hour I got around 60 reports from phase 1, 30 reports from phase 2 and 1 report from phase3. According

to the Qubino manual it is two configuration parameters that governs this:

Parameter 40 - Reporting Watts on power change. Default value 10 meaning report when change >= 10%

Parameter 42 - Reporting Watts on time interval. Default value 600 meaning report each 10 minutes.

It should be possible to configure these parameters probably using Z-Wave as the units support 

Z-Wave COMMAND_CLASS_CONFIGURATION_V1 which, of course, is completely out of reach from any Fibaro HC.

 

Any idea of a device that can communicate over Z-Wave using all the Z-wave command classes implemented

in a specific device? 

 

As the phase 3 unit does not send any reports by itself I have gone back to the 300 sec polling interval to get anything out of it

and now I get 5 minutes reports from that device.

 

After these experiences with HC3 and the energy meters I start to worry about the Home Automation market. Are these completely

willy-nilly implementations the normal standard out there? When will Fibaro implement full support of all command classes? Probably

never. 

[RH_Dreambox 182]

I think you should try to skip your idea about polling.
If you create a scene (or QuickApp) that asks for the value of a device every minute, you get the current value of the device every minute, regardless of what the polling is configured for.

For example value = fibaro.getValue(Id_number, "value" or value = fibaro.getValue(Id_number, "power".

[wienog 107]

As @RH_Dreambox said alread:  stop the polling idea !!  It will not help you to get what you want. Polling is an old method for communication that is almost never used anymore.

Modern devices like your energy meters will send their values whenever you want and as often as you want. Just adjust the parameters under the tab 'Parameters' of the device and use the button "add parameter". Then add the number of the parameter you want to set , the bit value and the value you want it to have (see instruction manual of the device) and that's all you need.

[akatar 207]

I.m sorry, some devices needs to be polled.

I have several duwi wall dimmers and switches that doesn't sent a status change.

 

[wienog 107]

7 minutes ago, akatar said:

I.m sorry, some devices needs to be polled.

I have several duwi wall dimmers and switches that doesn't sent a status change.

 

Absolutely right but Duwi is indeed....old.... Don't even know if they still make z-wave switches. They were good but big. So you just confirm what I said before: only for some older devices is polling needed. (although, I have to say the one DUWI-rollerswitch I still have in the house is not polled and shows the setting of the rollers exactly...)

Just had a look at their website, seems rather empty....

Edited November 25, 2020 by wienog
Extra information

[akatar 207]

@wienog the duwi zwave.me  (green sticker on the module) do sent the status update, the older ones do not.

I need to replace these modules with walli, but i am waiting for the walli controller, i asked a couple of times in this forum when this module is availeble but no reaction from fibaro (as usual)

 

worst case scenario, i skip the walli complete and wait for another compagny that makes these kind of devices.

 

And the last couple of weeks several fibaro devices causes trouble, i don't know if it's the hc3 firmware or the devices itself.

so that is also a reason not to expand my house wirh fibaro devices. ( at this moment)