Is It Just Me Or Do Users Want Device Monitoring Features?

[FriedCheese2006]

There's info in the forums available or you can start up a new thread. Wouldn't want to derail this one too much.

[rlithgow1]

Ok I guess I can see how that might be useful..

[sburke781]

@j715

Not sure if this is exactly what this thread is about, but I wish there was someway to know when a device drops off the network.

This wasn't quite my intent, but I did leave it somewhat open in my title at least. And not to say I disagree, something in this space would be quite popular, as are the Community developed options, acknowledging the difficulties that can come with assessing the health of a device

@amithalp

Do you mean something like this?

Device Active Time Tracker. Track the time a device is On, Open, Closed, Power over a set threshold. Watch it visually on dashboard or use the time to trigger something in Rule Machine. Supports Switch-On, Contact-Open, Contact-Closed, and Power levels. [image] Copy and paste the parent and child "DeviceTimeActiveTracker" apps into you Developers Tools / Apps Code. Add App and click on parent app to create child app for each device type. Can make a table of multiple devices of same capabili…

Yes, that and the earlier Light on Table conversation / app from Bruce was where I started to notice people asking for this most recently.

The Device Health Status @FriedCheese2006 linked might be a step further than what I had in mind, being more in the monitoring space, which again I did not clarify in my original post. Again, a great idea / app, just not where I was heading.

I share your concerns @bjcowles, both in terms of the HE hub reporting a health status and the resource potentially required to deliver it. I could understand it would be problematic to deliver a single status that is reliable across all devices that are often unreliable in their behaviour and reporting. I think capturing various data points to support users achieve what they need is likely the right balance.

[FriedCheese2006]

@sburke781

just not where I was heading.

Too bad. I took you there

[sburke781]

The kind of thing I have in mind would be a single attribute that captures the time of the last full period of a key state, such as the total time the device was ON. Once the device next turns off, the attribute would get updated. A preference setting could be included to turn this feature on or off, to reduce load on the hub. I would expect the default would be off, as it is not likely to be a widely used feature.

People could track the events linked to this attribute to see a short history of the periods of the device being on, without need to setup rules to calculate / capture it. The same setup could apply to contact sensors being open, presence, motion activity, etc. The inverse may also be relevant, off, closed, inactive, etc.

[sburke781]

The more I think about this the more I think it is likely to be an App, rather than asking for changes to ALL built-in drivers That doesn't change (too much I hope) my idea of a process of selectively recording an attribute against devices for the most recent time spent in a specific state. While the capability may need to change, hopefully this does not require a change to the drivers that implement it.

[FriedCheese2006]

I think that's the idea behind the Device Tracker app, but will need a few more iterations to support any attribute. I'm with you in that it should require a change to the driver as long as it sends an event for the attribute.

[sburke781]

I'd hope that a change to the capability and a new App would be enough.... Trying to avoid the overhead for the dev's to change all their code, just for my thought-bubble... As much as I expect they were chomping at the bit to implement my early design.... Just hold-fire guys... Give us some more time...