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This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- current [2018/07/14 10:44] – James Sentman
+++ current [2023/06/03 16:12] – James Sentman
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=====XTension Version 9.4.6=====
+=====XTension Version 9.5.2=====
-Released: 7/13/2018\\
+> There is a Beta version available: [[current:beta|]]
+Released 4/9/2023\\
 \\
-Download: [[http://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_986.zip|XTension v9.4.6 (build 986) 7/13/2018]]\\
+Download Universal Binary for all Supported OS versions; [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9_5_2.dmg|XTension. v 9.5.2 (build 1076)]]\\
-zipfile md5 = [[tech_notes:md5|448274952c7346224c2b778594be2b81]]\\
+**Minimum System Version** for this release is OSX 10.10 but not all plugins will function properly prior to 10.13. Please start the necessary work to upgrade to at least 10.13 or recommended 10.15 or newer. At some point in the near future it will no longer be possible for me to support anything prior to 10.13 and the video plugins will never work prior to Catalina.
-====Change Log====
+**Rosetta Note:** While the entirety of the main app and all more recent plugins are Universal and run natively on Intel or Apple Silicon there are a few older plugins including the W800 and CM11 that are still Intel only. They run fine under Rosetta and you’ll never notice the difference. The only issue is that Rosetta is not included by default on the new Apple Silicon Macs. You’ll need to first run any Intel app, or do a get info on any app at all and select “open using Rosetta” then the OS will tell you that you need Rosetta and would you like to install it now. Once you complete that those plugins will run normally.
-  * NEW: Lifx device support. These are excellent WiFi attached color capable light bulbs. Most of the same features as the phillips hue bulbs but they don’t require a hub. Create a new instance of the Lifx interface and all the devices on the network will magically appear in your database and give you full control over their color and color temperature. These bulbs can also be brighter than the Phillips bulbs as they come in 75 watt equivalent versions. As of this moment the driver is in beta. It does not yet poll the bulbs for local changes or for changes that you might make through their mobile apps or other interfaces. It does not support the more complex devices they sell like the panels or the tracks though that is definitely coming. It also doesn’t have any support for color loops or display presentations yet but that is also coming.
-  * NEW: Vera UI7 natively supports the standard virtual device that is commonly used in places where the vera insists on having a unit.
-  * NEW: Vera UI7 now has a device type for Scene Controller. This will support Central Scene capable dimmers like the [[supported_modules:wallmote|WallMote Quad]] and the Hank branded scene controllers.
-  * NEW: wiki article discussing the [[supported_modules:wallmote|WallMote]] scene controllers.
-  * NEW: wiki artivle discussing the excellent [[supported_modules:hs-wd100|Home Seer HS-WD100+ dimmer]] family of devices and how to set their inner parameters with XTension.
-  * NEW: Vera UI7 new [[dictionary:unitcontrol:setdata|setData]] command for setting parameters inside ZWave devices. This will let you easily set things like a switches ramp rate or turning it’s LED’s on and off.
-  * NEW: Vera UI7 support for the new [[supported_modules:hs-wd200|Home Seer HS-WD200+ dimmers]] and how to control their lights individually via the above mentioned setData command. You can now control the color and flash rate of each LED on these new dimmers directly from XTension to show the state of something or flash an alert or anything you choose. The WD200 devices also support 2 new gestures. You can now trap in XTension the quadruple tap and the pentuple tap if you need that many central scene commands :)
-  * FIX: Vera UI7 now properly recognizes door and motion sensors and will create units for them in XTension without you having to wait for an event to happen on them.
-  * FIX: unrecognized security devices should now automatically create a unit for their tripped state once the first change for that unit is received. Previously we were suppressing those incorrectly. This means that I don’t have to manually add every single potential type of security unit but ones I haven’t manually added will not create a unit at startup, only after a change in state has been sent.
-  * FIX: Fixed a problem with the web remote not processing the correct “state” advanced label syntax based on the value of a unit. Basically it was always treating a unit as if it were not-dimmable so you would only ever get the off state and the first on state. Now it will probably parse that state list and give you the correct label.
-  * FIX: A regression in a previous build caused the RFXt driver to launch the wrong actual plugin. Thats now fixed and the RFXt will work normally again.
-  * FIX: The “show properties” button in the toolbar of the edit unit window once again shows the properties window for the unit rather than opening up an empty window and logging an error.
-  * FIX: Vera UI7 now properly displays updates for remote changes of thermostat mode and fan mode changes. Previously it failed to receive these and the mode would only update if you changed it from XTension.
-  * FIX: Vera UI7 I was using the wrong state variable for the energy savings mode, it should now update properly when the mode is changed locally at the thermostat or through other vera interfaces.
-  * FIX: If you’re editing a script that has an idle timer created and run it in the script editor and then click cancel rather than save the timer and script will no longer be left running in the background with no way to stop them except for quitting and restarting XTension.
-  * NEW: Web Remote and Mobile Web Remote both display the color temperature as a degrees k value like the built in control in XTension.
-  * NEW: Web Remote and Mobile Web Remote when controlling a color or color temperature unit now will show the current state of the color or temperature in a box in the upper right of the detailed unit controls just like the desktop control did. Clicking on that control will bring up a small window where you can physically type in a color’s RGB value or a color temperatures degree k value and send it specifically to the device. This works for any color or color temperature supported device. Previously the web UI’s were limited to clicking on the limited pallet of choices or selecting a preset.
-  * NEW: You can now save a preset from the mobile web remote. The previously was impossible because you could not generate a control-click to bring up the contextual menu on an iPhone. There is now a “save preset” button that brings up a list of the current presets for you to select from into which it will then save the current state of the bulb, color temperature or color as currently operating.
-  * NEW: plugins can now execute script handlers inside either it’s interface script or inside a units ON script in order to send you more info about the device.
-  * NEW: plugins can now define script handlers and insert them into the “insert” menu when editing either the units ON script or the interface script so you don’t even have to go read the wiki to know what information it can send you.
-  * NEW: Via that mechanism the new Vera UI7 plugin adds the “on central scene” handler and some documentation to that popup when you’re editing an eligable units ON script.
-  * NEW: a plugin may save to a unit a “default” label that describes the current state but without overriding the ON and OFF label of the unit if the user has set those. For example the new thermostat support will set a default label in the Mode and State units for the current mode and state. If you’re happy with those values you don’t have to change anything however if your thermostat supports different values or you just wish to change the wording of those you can still add an advanced label state tag to the On and Off labels of the unit to have it display what you wish. You can override the labels sent by the plugin. Previously I was sending actual values for the On and Off labels which would have overwritten your custom settings.
-  * FIX: using the “install plugin” menu item to install a different version of a plugin that ships inside of XTension no longer tries to remove the one that is in the application. It just puts the new one inside the plugin folder in your database where it will override the shipped version.
-  * FIX: fixed an error condition with the Shared Database sender that could have it spinning at 100% of a CPU during certain error states while it retried to connect with no delay between attempts.
-  * NEW: Vera UI7 added another script command for Update Neighbors. If a device is not responding or not reliably responding to commands you can reconfigure just the units nearby to try to create a new path. There is no interface button for this yet but you can do it via the command line by issuing something like: tell xUnit “name of a unit” to updateNeighbors()
-  * FIX: after installing a plugin via the “install plugin” menu item only interfaces that were actually enabled at the time of the install are restarted. Previously all interfaces assigned to the plugin were started up even if they were disabled at the time you installed the plugin.
-  * NEW: the install plugin now internally works the same as the new [[dictionary:xtension:recycleinterface|Recycle Interface]] verb. This means that it returns very quickly and the interfaces will shutdown and restart cleanly in the background.
+====9.5.2 Change Log:====
-Note: 6:30am 7/14/18 I am still plagued by the occasional version control snafu from our switch to using git recently. The first version I uploaded had the wrong builds of both the Lifx plugin and the mobile web remote plugin included in the package. The Lifx plugin wouldn’t have run at all, The mobile web remote just displayed the color controls for every unit. I’ve re-uploaded the same version with both of those things including the correct version as of 6:30am on 7/14. If you downloaded prior to that and use the mobile web remote or wanted to try the Lifx plugin please download again. Sorry about that...
+  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:sysinfo|Sysinfo Plugin]] for monitoring Disk space, Disk Usage, Network Usage and Networking Errors.
+  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:zadarma|Zadarma plugin]] to send SMS messages via the commercial Zadarma service.
+  * NEW: New option in the Preferences dialog to Dont Stop A Restart With "Window Has Changes" Dialog. This is not really the correct way to handle this so consider it a stop gap measure until I can properly support the saving and restoring of the window state. Previously if you had left a script window open with changes, or an Edit Unit window open with changes and the machine tried to restart automatically the “this document has changes, are you sure you wish to throw them away” message would halt the shutdown and leave XTension in a non-operating condition. With this option turned on XTension will still provide those warnings if you manually try to close a window that has changes, but if the app is being quit it will allow the changes to be lost and so not cause hangups or problems when restarting the server. If this is not how you wish it to behave then you can turn this off in the Preferences.
+  * NEW: List windows now display the number of Units in the List as well as the number of Units in an error condition or with low battery messages. This is shown in the title of the window after the List name.
+  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT plugin]] now lets you get values out of a payload that is in JSON format without having to script your way through it. You can use the new JSON Path field to give names of entries and indexes into json arrays to find the value you are looking for. This applies to all non-special device units and so once you get to the info you want any of the Units will then be able to look for numerical data, or enumerated values or just put the value into the Description at that point. This does not effect the sending of payloads. If you have to send a JSON packet you’ll still have to build that in a script for the moment and use the raw publish command.
+  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|Hubitat plugin]] now properly implements sending of a user/password to the hubitat if you have that option turned on in the hub.
+  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|Hubitat plugin]] now properly handles valve devices and controlling them via their open/close commands.
+  * NEW TEMPORARY: I have made some changes to the standard off handling in the Hubitat that fixes some oddness with enumerated commands. I believe this works for all existing devices as well but just in case there is a new checkbox in the hubitat settings that will allow you to drop back to the old handling if it causes you any problems. Please let me know if you have to use this for any reason and the details of that otherwise I will be removing it in the next version unless I hear from people with the need to do this.
+  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|Hubitat plugin]] has a new checkbox that will log status messages from the Hubitat. These are normally things like “the bedroom lights were turned on” but it might be useful to see these if there are issues or debugging that you’re trying to sort out. It can be a lot of extra logging that doesn’t usually contain any useful information so it is an option you have to turn on if you wish to see it.
+  * NEW: Those same Hubitat status messages are now automatically added to a Unit property called “Status Message” and another Unit Property “Status Timestamp” will be the date/time when the current message was received. This way you can trap them in a script, or add a custom column to any List window to show them if you wish rather than just logging them. The above checkbox for logging the status messages does not have to be turned on to send this info to the Unit Properties. This is always done.
+  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:tplink|Kasa plugin]] now properly supports in wall dimmers as well as just bulbs.
+  * NEW: Added support for Ramp Rates to the [[supported_hardware:tplink|Kasa plugin]]so you can control the dimming speed on a command by command basis if you wish.
+  * NEW: Added several options to the [[supported_hardware:tplink|Kasa plugin]] for the handling of preset values for Kasa bulbs vs dimmers.
+  * NEW: The CPU Usage figures for plugins shown in the Interface List window when “show more information” is selected now includes the CPU usage of any helper apps or sub processes that the plugin might be running. This makes them much more accurate and useful for very CPU intensive plugins such as the Video plugins or the rtlamr or other plugins that use helper apps.
+  * NEW: The Interface List window also shows a percent of memory use for the plugin instance and any child processes after the CPU Usage number.
+  * NEW: A new option in the Interface List window lets you chose if the CPU Usage calculation is done based on 100% a single CPU core, or 100% being every CPU available in the machine. So if you have 10 cores and you chose individual then 100% would be using a full core, but per machine that would only be 10% of the overall machine load. Whichever makes more sense to you when viewing it. The numbers are usually very low and so many not show up on the graph at all unless you increase their values by setting it to per CPU. Plugins that are using GPU resources or that are using helper apps may show as using more than 100% if per CPU is selected. This is OK.
+  * CHANGE: The helper app for the Video system that does the encoding is now a proper background app and so will not show up in the dock as it is running.
+  * CHANGE: The [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT plugin]] now creates new units with a default timeout of 2 minutes rather than the original 15 seconds which caused a lot of unnecessary chattering in otherwise valid receptions. You can still adjust this to whatever value is correct for your system after the units are created. This does not change any setting you have set in existing Units created by the plugin.
+  * CHANGE: The [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT plugin]] now creates new units with the “do not log new value receptions” checkbox set as it is possible for this plugin to generate a truly obscene amount of logging if it’s in an area with a lot of devices. You can turn this back on for the Units you wish to watch. It will not change the setting of any already existing Units.
+  * CHANGE: The [[supported_hardware:weedtech|Weeder plugin]] will filter non-ascii characters that might be received when making IP connections. This may help if there is noise on the data line that inserts random data or if an ethernet/serial device is stuck in a mode sending packing characters. If it is because of noise it will not actually solve the problem but it will give you more time to sort it out. If it’s a packing problem it will probably be OK as long as the packing character is not in the range of ascii that the weeder cards use to communicate normally. This same filtering is not yet applied to direct serial connections, please let me know if that is a thing that would help anyone.
+  * The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|Hubitat plugin]] now throws more useful errors if there is a problem with the API number, or API Key or user/password so it’s easier to sort out a failing connection. Previously it would just complain that it couldn’t connect but did not elaborate.
+  * The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|Hubitat plugin]] will now log Zigbee Radio status changes or errors as proper messages from the Hubitat rather than as unknown messages.
+  * FIX: Found a problem with the [[supported_hardware:tplink|Kasa plugin]] that might have caused some Units to be created with the wrong device type, or even no device type at all causing XTension to create it as if it was an old school X10 unit as in the absence of the more recent data structures it seems to regress to it’s origins. I am not certain this has fixed all the problems people were having with this and the situation that it would happen in is odd and therefore rare and difficult to duplicate. Specifically it was only a problem if the kasa dimmer type was discovered directly after a powerstrip type.
+  * FIX: If the [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT plugin]] receives messages from ESPresense devices that do not have a “distance” parameter for some reason it will just ignore that message. Previously this could lead to further updates being ignored as it threw out other updates after the error. While this will allow processing to continue I believe that this can only happen due to an error or a bug or some problem with the ESPresense device or software and this will not be able to fix that. You may lose reception entirely from that receiver, or just that beacon that it’s sending, but something deeper is causing this. At least XTension will continue to process valid packets from anywhere else.
+  * FIX: The [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT plugin]] will now properly publish enumerated values on systems that use a period instead of a comma as their decimal separator.
+  * FIX: Added a random pause up to 3 seconds when starting up multiple [[video:rtsp|RTSP video streams]] at the same time. On older or more resource limited machines this was causing problems if many streams tried to startup at exactly the same moment.
+  * FIX: An [[video:rtsp|RTSP video stream]] can become confused at some point and stop sending full frames from some devices. Previously the plugin would happily display and record these partial or badly corrupted frames. Under most circumstances it will now realize that they are not valid frames and restart the stream in order to recover from this problem.
+  * FIX: The [[supported_hardware:diy|DIY Plugin]] will now properly recover from the loss of a network serial connection the same way that it does for a local serial connection.
+  * FIX: Older binary plugins such as the Vera plugin would throw errors when trying to issue some unit specific scripting commands. This was due to the changes in the previous version that allowed the scripts to throw applescript errors if you called a handler that did not exist. The older plugins were not registering their handlers in the same way and so fell afoul of this. They will now let you call any of the handlers without an error.
+  * FIX: Fixed some problems with the managed folder system that is used by the new video plugins for managing disk space on the recording volume. This will now properly keep the minimum disk space you have set available. If you suspect something is going wrong with this there is an option in the new Debug menu (see below) that will let you log it’s progress and calculations to the log which you can then send to me for debugging.
+  * FIX: The managed folder system now recovers from having a volume not present at startup, or if a volume is unmounted and then re-attached. It will let you know if the Volume is unavailable and then will begin scanning it again when it re-appears.
+  * DEBUG: Added a checkbox to the preferences for “show debug menu” this will reveal a debug menu where I have gathered many of the various hidden debugging options in the app for easier access when it is necessary to gather more info for me on a problem. Please do not experiment with these unless I’ve asked you to as they may generate huge amounts of log output or break other things if used incorrectly.
+-----
+NOTE: This disk image no longer includes the older legacy plugins that will not be updated for newer OS versions. If you still need to run the [[supported_hardware:cm19]], [[supported_hardware:cm15a]], [[supported_hardware:zwave]] or the various Smarthome X10 interfaces please download [[tech_notes:catalina|the legacy plugins package from here]] and install the ones you need via the “Install Plugin” menu item of the “Database” menu.
 =====Previous Releases=====
 {{indexmenu>:current#2|js#doku}}
-=== Older Versions ===
-[[beta|The Changelog and Download links for builds between 763 and version 9.1 can be found here]]