Differences

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

--- current [2023/02/25 15:22] – added beta link James Sentman
+++ current [2024/02/05 17:53] (current) – James Sentman
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=====XTension Version 9.5.1=====
+=====Download XTension 9.5.4=====
-**There is a [[current:beta|Beta Version of 9.5.2 Available]] which is important for anyone using the disk space management features of the new video system.**\\
+>2/5/2024 [[current:beta|XTension 9.5.5 Beta 1]] is available.
-\\
-Released 2/3/2023\\
+Released 12/19/2023\\
 \\
-Download Universal Binary for all Supported OS versions; [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9_5_1.dmg|XTension. v 9.5.1 (build 1069)]]\\
+Download Universal Binary for all Supported OS versions; [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9_5_4.dmg|XTension. v 9.5.4 (build 1085)]]\\
+**This is an important update for NGROK users.** This updates the ngrok client to support the system changes they are making live. The older version will no longer be supported very soon. Anyone using ngrok tunnels should definitely perform this upgrade as soon as possible.
 **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.
@@ Line 12: / Line 13: @@
 **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.
+====9.5.4 Change Log:====
-====9.5.1 Change Log:====
+  * The [[supported_hardware:hue|Phillips Hue]] plugin now properly supports non-dimmable plug in modules.
+  * Fixed a problem with the [[supported_hardware:wiz|Wiz plugin]] that would log errors as the libraries now return the name of the scene rather than it’s ID as they did previously.
-  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:mqtt|MQTT Client Plugin]] for getting info from, or sharing info to, any MQTT Broker.
+  * Fixed the error that was logged while trying to create a symlink to the internal python version if you did not have a /usr/local/bin folder on your machine.
-  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:mqtt:espresence|ESPresense Support]] in the new MQTT Client Plugin.
+  * The python symlink is now created inside the XTension Support folder “pythonxt” and you can use that to run python scripts inside XTension or from elsewhere but using the XTension settings. It is especially useful if you are running python scripts from an async shell script in XTension as they will inherit all the path info to run properly where running the built in python may cause errors.
-  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:nohassle4|Plugin for No Hassle AV 4x4 HDMI Switches]]
+  * NEW: Added an option to delay quitting. This will popup a window asking if you really meant to quit, stopping accidental shutdown of the entire program due to misplaced fingers. The window will count down for 30 seconds and then quit the app. This window does not come up if the system tells XTension to quit as if before a restart or something similar. Find the checkbox to turn it on in the Preferences.
-  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:nohassle8|Plugin for No Hassle AC 8x8 HDML Switches]]
+  * NEW: Added the option to send a value of 0 for a dimmable Unit to the On script if there is no Off script. Normally a value of 0 for any dimmable unit will be sent to the Off script rather than the On script. Unless there is no off script. This meant that previously you potentially had to duplicate some of your logic for handling values in the On and Off script. When this is turned on in the Preference, and a Unit has no Off script. The On script will be run instead with the future value set to 0. This is on by default, but if it causes you issues with some of your scripting you can turn it off in the preferences window.
-  * NEW: [[supported_hardware:controlbywebout|Control By Web plugin]] that makes outgoing connections rather than using the inter device communications protocol. The original Control By Web plugin is unaffected and still included in the package.
+  * Fixed the incorrect link to the mailing list signup page in the purchase dialog.
-  * NEW: If there are important messages generated during startup they will also display in a new Startup Messages window. This way problems that would otherwise be lost in a very long log output are more easy to see and then deal with. This was build first to support the checking for multiple-interface collisions see next item...
+  * Removed some debug logging I failed to remove before the last release. This was in the conversion of potentially confused strings into floats and so did not affect every plugin, but might have logged confusing information occationally.
-  * NEW: During database load any collisions in Multi-Interface setups will be logged and also written to the new Startup Messages Window. In order for multiple interfaces to work there must not be a unit actually receiving messages at the same address on the extra interfaces. This makes it easier to find this situation and fix it.
+  * There was a change in AppleScript support in OS versions from Ventura on that would actually enforce some, but not all, of the scripting dictionary flags that have never, in the entire history of the Mac, mattered. So us developers got sloppy and failed to add things like the “optional” flag to all the verbs reliably. The first I’ve found and fixed was with the Speak verb where it would tell you that the “in” parameter was required. It is no longer required. So far I have not found any other such issues and a visual search through the dictionary did not reveal any more such issues, but it’s entirely possible there are more parameters that are not properly marked as optional. If you find any such errors please let me know.
-  * NEW: The [[:video|new Video system]] now inserts the time stamp and any other messages you add for the reason for recording to the closed captioning track of the recorded video snippet. This is superior to just overlaying the video as it does not obscure any of the frame as it can be moved around in the player or even turned off if you do not need to see this.
+  * The Interface list window can now be sorted by CPU Usage, Memory Usage and Process ID. This only works if you have the “show more information” option turned on in the gear menu on the window. This can be a great aide in finding the plugin process that is eating up all your CPU or memory and linking a python process shown in the Activity Monitor to the plugin it’s actually running. They all just say “python” in the monitor. But now it’s easier to find the PID number in the list if you sort by it.
-  * NEW: [[:video|new Video system]] now will display any events you sent as the reason for a recording on the original Web Interfaces which brings this into line with the way the original Video Pitcher system worked.
+  * Updated the [[xtension_manual:ngrok|ngrok client]] version to 3.5. This is an important update if you are using this service as the old version will no longer be supported sometime in January. There were many changes to the usage of the client, and many more to the layout of the configuration file. I believe I have them all sorted out, but if you have issues let me know. All output from the client is logged during startup so you can check immediately if it thinks it started the tunnels or if it logged errors instead.
-  * NEW: In the Video Encoder plugin whenever a recording is complete and post processed or encoded and ready an event is called in the plugins interface script passing you the name of the video stream it came from as well as the full path to the file so if you wish to script uploading them or doing anything else with them it is now easier to do so.
+  * I had previously hidden some of the lower level debugging aids in the contextual menus by having people hold the option key while right clicking. There is really no need for this extra step so I removed it. The Contextual menus for Units and Interfaces will have their “log debug data” and “Reveal in Finder” options at the bottom of all the contextual menus for them. This will make it easier to collect info for me if things start behaving oddly.
-  * NEW: If you’re using the “live recording” option that doesn’t use the Video Encoder separate process the above event is sent to the video plugin’s interface script instead. So they can also be handled in the same way, just in a different place.
+  * I added the same debug logging info to the contextual menus of global scripts should it ever be necessary to get a look at that.
-  * NEW: The [[supported_hardware:hubitat|hubitat plugin]] now supports getting the data from objects with the attributes of “rate”, “valve” and “totalConsumptionToday”. This was for the Moen FLO Smart Shutoff and water meter device but will work for any device that uses those keywords/topics for it’s data.
+  * To that debug output I added another line of info comparing the length of the Unit Address in both bytes and glyphs. This might be helpful to more easily discover if a plugin or a bug somewhere has inserted invisible characters into the Address field of a Unit causing things to get disconnected in the database and potentially making more and more units being created when there really should be only the one.
-  * NEW: Added a “SendRaw” handler to the [[supported_hardware:arduino|Arduino plugin]] so that in addition to the regular Unit commands you can send any arbitrary data to your device as well.
+  * There were some significant updates and improvements in the main program libraries that will make many things run faster and smoother. So far my testing of all of them work just fine. They aren’t a thing I can turn off though, they are just part of the latest compiler update. It will depend on what you’re doing, how busy your machine is and how fast it is in general whether you’ll see any difference at all. Usually the things they improved aren’t an issue until you’re doing something many times in a row. So I expect that the main improvements will be in window redrawing and things like that, but if you have a machine that is very busy it may improve that somewhat throughout.
-  * FIX: Units added later to a list shared via home kit will no longer be at risk of getting a Duplicate Accessory ID error.
-  * FIX: If you have units that are already suffering from the above problem there are [[supported_hardware:homekit|new script functions]] you can use to find and correct the errors.
-  * FIX: Fixed an issue that would cause a slight increase in CPU usage in the MJPEG Camera plugin each time it reconnected the stream.
-  * FIX: Fixed an issue with the Amcrest Camera API plugin that would cause it’s CPU usage to go to 100% after a stream connection was lost and restarted.
-  * FIX: Improved the syncing of the database to the plugins fixing an issue that sometimes caused an error during the load that could have stopped any units after the error from loading at all.
-  * FIX: The available ram that is logged when XTension is starting up was calculating incorrectly displaying what looked like just a few meg rather than the correct value. It is not logged properly and is therefore useful again.
-  * CHANGE: Calling plugin registered scripting handlers will now generate an error in the script if you call one that does not exist or misspell it or something similar. Previously such errors were lost silently.
-  * FIX: When doing the “log debug data” for a unit the thisUnit value is set properly letting it show up when filtering the log for output from that Unit.
-  * FIX: Fixed an issue loading Unit Icon files that were not JPEGS. All system supported graphic types are again working.
-  * CHANGE: When setting the enumerations for a unit value the individual comma delimited entries are now trimmed of any leading or trailing spaces when they are saved, It is common to type a list with spaces in it that you don’t actually want in the value like “one, two, three” which would have resulted in the value being “ two” now when saving the Unit the values are fixed so that the previous would become the correct “one,two,three"
-  * FIX: Fixed a typo in the debug logging in the Phillips Hue plugin that caused a second error while trying to log useful data about a first one. The error messages are now potentially useful instead of being an error about the error handling.
-  * CHANGE: if you select the “Show More Information” menu item from the gear menu of the Interface List window the CPU usage of each plugin process is calculated for all running plugins. This makes looking for something having a problem or stuck in a loop where it shouldn’t be easier. This is not a completely trivial extra load so the data is only gathered if you have the list window in the Show More Information state and not in the normal more compressed state.
-  * FIX: The camera API plugins are now python compiled before adding to the application bundle during the build process. They always worked fine but they would have taken longer to load as they needed to be compiled by the python interpreter each time and the compiled data could not be saved as they are inside the signed portion of the application so doing so would break the developer signature.
 -----