Mac Home Automation

XTension 9.5.2 PR 1 (3/21/2023)

Preview Release 1 of 9.5.2 is now available: XTension 9.5.2 pr1

• NEW: List Windows will show the number of units in the list, the number with errors and the number with low battery flags after the name of the list.
• MQTT Client plugin now sends enumerated values properly as well as receives them, no matter how many, or how few, enumerated values are in the list.
• Kasa/TP-Link: This now works for my devices to turn on and control “smart dimmer” devices. There is still some weirdness with setting a ramp rte if you’re turning on from off. All other cases seem to be working fine.
• Weeder: If extra packing characters, or other bogus data characters are received from an IP connected chain they will be thrown out and ignored prior to processing whats left of the data. This will not get around true problems with noise on the data ground or devices resetting due to power supply issues, but if it’s a matter of the wiznet card sending packing characters above the range of printable characters then this should get rid of that, Of course if the noise generates characters within the range of the bytes that are used for normal communications this will not solve the problem either.

XTension 9.5.2 Beta 3 (3/17/2023)

A third and hopefully last beta of 9.5.2 is now available: XTension 9.5.2 b3

• Added a slight random pause in the startup of the Video plugins as it seems that starting many of them all at once was causing some errors or hangups at the sheer number of processes being started at once.
• There was an error case in the Video plugin where frames would be corrupt, but rather than an error I could trap and therefore realize the camera was no longer sending valid data the system would return a corrupt frame with no way to tell that an error was occurring. This version adds some, but not all, traps to places where the frames are processed in order to trap this. If a camera starts doing this while it’s being recorded or streamed they will be caught and treated like a stall if they don’t get better on their own. The stream will then restart and go back to working properly. It may not catch this condition when nobody is looking at the stream or when the stream is not being recorded as the frames are either not received or not processed when not necessary. IN which case the stream would be fixed shortly after you started using it again.
• Fixed a bug in the DIY interface that could keep it from reconnecting to a networked device after the device rebooted or was otherwise disconnected from the network. The interface will now reconnect properly.
• Added support for ramp rate to the Kasa/TP-Link plugin. For any device that supports it you can include the “rate” parameter to any on/off/dim/bright command.
• Added specific support for Kasa Dimmers to the Kasa/TP-Link plugin. Previously they were treated as bulbs which caused some problems. This version also sends an ON before sending a Set Brightness command as they were not honoring the set_brightness unless they were already on. This on is sent with a very slow transition rate so that it should not cause any artifact before the set brightness command arrives a few ms later.
• When dealing with Kasa bulbs you can now control how a bulb is treated at power off. See the Kasa documentation for more info on the “nova” effect some bulbs have and how to fix that or set the next power on preset while turning them off.
• The Hubitat plugin now implements sending user name and password if you have set that up on your device.
• The Hubitat plugin now sends more helpful error messages if the API ID or Authentication token is wrong or corrupt in the interface setup.
• The Hubitat will now log more useful messages when the ZigBee Radio changes status rather than logging an unknown push message error.
• MQTT Units are now created with a timeout of 2 minutes instead of 15 seconds to avoid having quite so many on and off for normal devices that dont transmit that rapidly.
• MQTT Units are now created with the “dont log new value receptions” advanced unit option set to avoid having the log filled immediately with messages from them as potentially hundreds of units turn on and off constantly until the timeouts and other things are configured properly. You can turn this logging back on if you wish once you figure out which Units are actually important to you.
• Added the ability to navigate through a JSON packet in the MQTT Units to find the value that is important to you removing the need for most such things to be handled in code. Any JSON packet can be parsed through this but more complex structures, or sending JSON packets to the server, might still need to be handled in code. See the MQTT Plugin documentation for more info. There is also a link to the specifics and some examples on the plugin documentation page.

XTension 9.5.2 Beta 2 (2/27/2023)

A second beta of 9.5.2 is now available. XTension 9.5.2 b2

This beta fixes a problem with the most recent release that rendered the non-scripting dictionary commands to older interfaces like the Vera unavailable. These commands now work normally again.

If a volume is missing or not mounted when a video plugin attempts to register it as a space managed volume, XTension will log a single error but keep trying during the disk space scans to find it and when it appears it will begin scanning it normally. If a drive is unmounted and remounted it will continue to be properly scanned by the disk space manager for video recording.

XTension 9.5.2 Beta 1 (2/25/2023)

There is a beta version available of XTension 9.5.2 Download for all supported architectures: XTension 9.5.2 b1

This version contains important fixes to the new video system. This build fixes issues with the disk space management that could lead to the drives you’re storing video to filling up. The program now properly honors your settings in the video plugins setup pages where you set a minimum disk space to keep available on the disk. It will scan every 5 minutes and remove enough of the oldest files across all of the managed folders to bring the available space back up to your minimum setting.

A minimum disk space of 100m is maintained with a default of 5gb. Depending on the number of video streams you are saving to the disk you may wish to keep the disk space free higher than 5gb so that there is enough space to process the current file and record from new ones. Generally there needs to be at least 2x the disk space available as the size of the video snippet but pushing it too close could lead to a snippet failing to be saved at all.

Only files inside the folders you select for the video plugins are scanned and deleted if needed. No other folders on the disk are touched. This means that other things not part of the Video recording system might cause the disk to fill up, or to cause more video files to be deleted to keep the space available.

There are no other changes to this build from the last release of 9.5.1, so it should not cause any new problems. It also makes no changes to the database layout or structure. If you do need to revert you should not have to revert the database to the backup that is made automatically when this build is first run, but it will be there if you need it.

If you suspect an issue with the new disk space management or wish to see debug log output of it’s functioning and what files it chooses please go to the preferences and check the “show debug menu” checkbox. Then in the newly visible debug menu select the “Log Disk Space Management Info.” When in debug mode the scan will be run every minute instead of every 5 to collect more debug data which will be written to the log in a lovely orange. You may also use the “Run DiskCheck Now” menu item to force it to run while you’re watching. Uncheck the “Log Disk Space Management Info” menu item to go back to normal functioning. Be aware that other options in the debug menu are undocumented and may cause more problems than it’s worth to play with them. Please do not use other debug menu items unless I ask you to in order to collect more info on other issues.

-James 2/25/2023