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
WallMote Quad and the Hank branded scene controllers.
NEW: wiki article discussing the
WallMote scene controllers.
NEW: wiki artivle discussing the excellent
Home Seer HS-WD100+ dimmer family of devices and how to set their inner parameters with XTension.
NEW: Vera UI7 new
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
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
Recycle Interface verb. This means that it returns very quickly and the interfaces will shutdown and restart cleanly in the background.
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…