Differences

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

--- current [2018/07/28 17:20] – James Sentman
+++ current [2023/06/07 15:36] – James Sentman
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=====XTension Version 9.4.7=====
+=====Download XTension 9.5.2=====
-Released: 7/28/2018\\
+> There is a Beta version available: [[current:beta|]]
+Released 4/9/2023\\
 \\
-Download: [[http://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_987.zip|XTension v9.4.7 (build 987) 7/28/2018]]\\
+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|f7fa94e2b490265116c81b95a90e7a4b]]\\
+**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.
-  * Enhanced error checking for scripts with [[dictionary:xtension:startidler|idle]] callbacks. Errors in the script will not reliably cause the script to stop executing and not result in it potentially continuing to error as fast as it can.
-  * Script results are now cleared before the next calling of the script rather than after so no error condition can cause a previous result ID to hang around incorrectly.
-  * Thermostat “state” displays will now properly show the on or off label if you have set one, or the default label if being sent from the Vera or other plugin. This means that you’ll see the proper state of your thermostat shown in the label for that unit even if it’s something that XTension has never heard of before. You can always override this default label by adding in your own [[xtension_manual:advancedlabel|advanced label]] if you wish it to me more human readable than what comes directly from the Vera.
-  * In the script editing window the GoTo popup will more reliably highlight the correct handler in your script. Previously it might have matched both init2() and init() but will now find the right one.
-  * New: Added a “Resolution” popup to the thermostat controls. If you have a thermostat that can be set in increments of .5° or something other than full degree increments this will allow you to select those with the regular up and down buttons in the thermostat. NOTE: there is still a fish in there somewhere that keeps the thermostat control from working properly after you edit the page it’s on. If you edit the page a thermostat is on just save it and reload to get things going again until I can figure out why that is.\\
-available resolutions are currently 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0. If you need other values here let me know. NOTE: your thermostat has to actually support setting the temperature in these increments or it won’t work.
-  * Fix: The [[dictionary:more:parsejson|parse json]] verb previously had a problem with booleans in a keyed dictionary, but not in an array, this is fixed and booleans are handled properly in both cases.
-  * New: List menu is now always alphabetical. Previously the list was manually arrangeable and the first 9 items would get the menu shortcuts of command-1 through command-9. These commands are now configurable see next item.
-  * New: Menu Shortcuts panel on the Preferences window lets you set the menu shortcut keys 1 through 9 to any List or View.
-  * Sorting and management of the global scripts menu is now much faster for people that have many scripts.
-  * Fix: fixed a crashing problem with the find dialog on OS versions prior to 10.12. The find system now works properly with 10.12 back through 10.9 but will bring up the separate find panel for those versions rather than embedding the find bar at the top of the edit script window.
-  * Searching the database is now ludicrously faster than previous. It’s almost not worth having a progress bar anymore.
-  * Fix: When editing a Mobile Web Remote interface the pin number was not always being filled back into the edit field. It now gets properly populated regardless.
-  * New: For database sharing you can now select Global Scripts to share to the remote machine as well as unit lists. They will show up in the scripts menu under a sub menu with the name of the prefix that you set in the remote machines database sender configuration. At this moment you can only execute a script remotely. You can do so manually via those new menus, via a script or via a scheduled event. You cannot interact with the script yet at any level lower than that. You cannot tell it to execute a handler yet, nor can you get or set properties in it like you can with a local script. Unlike shared units, shared global scripts are ephemeral and will not appear in your system until the remote system connects. If you are referencing them in a script either before the remote system has connected, or after it has disconnected you’ll get a script not found error. You should wrap such commands in try/on error blocks to make sure your script continues to execute. The scripts will not show in the Manage Global Scripts window as you can’t edit them, but only in the scripts menu and be available to scheduled events or scripts by name.
-  * New: Added “put data” parameter to the [[dictionary:more:loadurl|load URL]] verb. If you wish to make a PUT to a web server or other device you can now supply whatever payload you wish to send via this parameter as a string. The request type will be automatically set to PUT so it will not be necessary to specify “PUT” as your custom request type. If you do set a custom request type however you can use this to send a non-form encoded block of data to any other web resource.
+====9.5.2 Change Log:====
+  * 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]]