[RELEASE] SnapAV WattBox Driver

[erniemiller]

Hey, folks! So, a while back I got one of those fancy picture frame TVs from LG mounted flush on my living room wall. The company that did the installation installed a device from SnapAV called a WattBox. Specifically, this one. They gave me this goofy dedicated app called OvrC Home to use in the event I needed to hard reset the TV. It was designed for folks who aren't very tech-savvy, I suspect. The thing had one button: "reboot TV".

Anyway, it bugged me that we had this outlet in an otherwise-inaccessible recessed box that was connected to Wi-Fi and it somehow wasn't represented in Hubitat in any way, so I went digging for a driver. Since none existed, I wrote my own.

Caveat: This is my first-ever multi-device parent-driver and my first telnet driver. That being said, "works for me."

With that out of the way, it's pretty simple. You just give it an IP or hostname, port, username, and password of the device, click save, and it will create a component switch to represent each outlet in your WattBox. If you end up getting some use out of it, let me know!

https://github.com/ernie/hubitat/blob/main/drivers/wattbox.groovy

[pstewart]

Thanks - this is great to see ... I'm waiting on some WattBox units to arrive in the coming weeks and just curious if telnet is the only option for connecting to them?

[erniemiller]

@pstewart

Thanks - this is great to see ... I'm waiting on some WattBox units to arrive in the coming weeks and just curious if telnet is the only option for connecting to them?

They have a web-based API as well, but it's XML (shudder), and I'm not sure it's available on all models. The benefit of the telnet API is that you get real-time updates on outlet status. You can check out the telnet API docs here -- the updates come through preceded by ~ when they weren't specifically requested by the user.

My WattBox supports only a subset of these, but honestly, most of the extra stuff here is superfluous for my purposes anyway. It is interesting, though, that some models report outlet voltage and such, but that would have required a custom component device driver to handle, and I'm not even sure those ever come through unsolicited, anyway. Might be a bit noisy as far as event generation, if so.