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Author Topic: Force Sensor Polling  (Read 5532 times)

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Offline fillibar

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Force Sensor Polling
« on: October 27, 2014, 12:16:51 pm »
The option of forcing a sensor poll from within the app would be nice. Select a sensor and trigger an individual poll or having an option to poll them all.
In usage actions I see it as:
1) Open sensor listing.
2a) Select and hold on a sensor. This would automatically trigger a poll of that sensor.
2b) Open the menu option for the page (none exists now) and select the Poll All option that would check all.

Sensor statuses will be updated as appropriate and will also flag if they did not receive a response (helpful for finding when sensors have died, out of range, etc...) within X time.

This helps reaffirm for people that the status is the latest one, even if a new poll is triggered (not sure) when the app is opened. Also helps if the app has been sitting open for a while.

Ex: My wife turned off one of the Link bulbs manually. I did not know it was not able to react until I tried to change the state and got an error.

This also brings up two potential configurable settings that would be nice (maybe in an Advanced Sensors menu on the Web US?):
1) Polling interval - How long between polls the Almond+ takes for the sensors.
2) Sensor timeout - How long before the Almond+ gives up waiting for a sensor response. Would obviously affect time it takes to poll if there are many sensors that are not responding.
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Offline Automate

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #1 on: October 27, 2014, 02:26:13 pm »
This assumes the sensor is line powered.  Most battery powered sensors go into a sleep mode to save battery and can not immediately respond to a poll.

Offline fillibar

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2014, 03:10:13 pm »
An important caveat to be noted. So it might apply more to modules than sensors even though they currently all reside under sensors. Not sure how many sensors do this but as an example my motion sensors have batteries but can also receive line power.
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LGNilsson

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2014, 03:02:35 am »
I'm not even sure if this is possible with a lot of sensors, but what should be possible to do, but don't expect it any time soon, would be to add an option to set the poll time on the sensor, if supported.
So say you have a temperature sensor, then you should be able to set the poll time on it from x to y depending what range is supported by the sensor.

However, in your example, the bulb should've sent its status change within less than a second from it having been changed, so you might be seeing something entirely different here. We haven't tested these bulbs yet, but I know we have some coming, so there might still be room for improvement on how they work with the Almond+.

Offline fillibar

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2014, 08:18:20 am »
When the bulb is on I see response times of 0.025 to 0.033 seconds (I think, I could have an extra zero in there, but either way the response time is a nice little detail). It was when the bulb was off (no power to it) that the app had trouble.
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Offline Ab

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2014, 03:58:31 pm »
I have couple of these Link bulbs installed as well and did notice some issues even with the bulb powered. The Phone/tablet app showed the bulb state as Off when the state was On and vice-versa (indicating refresh issues) or showed the dimmer as 100% when it was dimmed or the wrong one displayed that it was dimmed when not etc... I had to hit the button (in the App) to refresh and get it to work.

Not tested with A+ UI as yet!

LGNilsson

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2014, 09:53:03 pm »
Is this on Android or iOS?

Offline fillibar

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #7 on: November 05, 2014, 12:54:27 pm »
I use the Android app.
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Offline fillibar

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #8 on: November 05, 2014, 01:04:00 pm »
Just to note, I just checked the app now and noted 2 oddities that relate to this:
1) Both GE Link bulbs I have show as "On". That is highly unlikely as I did not turn them on and one of them (at least) had the power manually turned off for the fixture it is in this morning.
2) One of my motion detectors indicates motion... But it has for days. It is in the garage, so there are no likely causes for a false positive (no animals).

My bet on both of these is that the Almond+ has lost connection and is retaining the last known value. Example of the need for forced polling and communication timeout.
Almond 3 mesh handling the home.

Offline mparadis

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #9 on: November 06, 2014, 09:36:04 pm »
Just making sure that you know if you turn off the power going to the link bulbs they cannot be turned back on by the almond+ until power was restored... I don't know of anyway to turn them off "manually" other than unscrew them or turn off the switch going to the lamp they are in.

Offline fillibar

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #10 on: November 08, 2014, 06:56:59 am »
Yes, of course I know that (but thanks for double checking). I also know enough customer support stories to not be insulted by the question.

The problem is not that I cannot control them, but that I do not "know" I cannot control them from the app. It does not say "failure to communicate" or some such... It says "On"... I know they will not work, but nobody else in my house will understand why not until it takes me longer to explain then it would for me to turn them on manually.
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LGNilsson

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #11 on: November 08, 2014, 09:32:18 am »
It should be possible to do this with mains powered sensors, but it'll be very hard with battery powered devices.
I've brought this up with the software team, but we're going to have to take a better look at how we can do this.

Offline eldaria

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Re: Force Sensor Polling
« Reply #12 on: December 04, 2014, 03:45:44 am »
It would be nice to at least have some kind of indication.
I have a sensor assigned that has not had a battery connected to several months, and it is happily showing a status of Open.

My Home alarm while it is using some kind of Proprietary wireless communication will report if a sensor lost contact.
In my previous apartment I actually had one of the reed sensors driving me nuts, it was in a outside storage room, just within range, but during the winter I suppose when the temperature dropped, I would frequently (about once an hour) get an SMS that the Alarm lost connection, and then another SMS that it had re-established connection.

So it did do some kind of polling, and although not ZigBee or Z-Wave, it used the same type of batteries as the Securifi sensors do and has about a year and a half battery life.

On the Vera Wiki is a section about polling, and it seems at least for Z-wave that the sensors decide if they can be polled.
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Polling_Settings

ZigBee HA profile seems to have a 7,5 sec polling rate according to this book.
http://books.google.se/books?id=481PeRPyiEoC&pg=PT282&lpg=PT282&dq=zigbee+polling+rate+security&source=bl&ots=gwxRL3SGpR&sig=D5T8c5Q-wLOt-RDnoSduddu8gp4&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=dxyAVLa-D8PlywOy0IHwDA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=zigbee%20polling%20rate%20security&f=false

 

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