Mac Home Automation

Released 7/30/2023

Download Universal Binary for all Supported OS versions; XTension. v 9.5.3 (build 1084)

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.

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.

• Amcrest Camera API:
  • Fixed an issue that caused some cameras not to work with the event system. If you find that any cameras still do not send you events but also dont log any other communication or connection errors please let me know we can gather some more info.
  • Added a check to the enableEvents() command so that it will not try to enable events that the plugin does not recognize as valid. This keeps you from either getting nothing, or getting an error message each time the unknown events is sent. If there are events that I am not handling that you know about and would like to get please let me know we can gather more info about them and set them up.
  • Added support for specific Units to link to Object Detection if your camera supports it. You can now create a Unit to get an ON when a human is detected, or when a vehical is detected and so forth.
  • Amcrest API New Status and Display commands:
    • setFontScale(0.1..2.0) control the size of the text displayed over the image.
    • setChannelTitleVisible( true|false)
    • setChannelTitleLocation( 34, 12)
    • setChannelTitleColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setChannelTitleBackColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setUserDisplayVisible( index, true|false)
    • setUserDisplayText( index, “the info to display”)
    • setUserDisplayLocation( index, xloc, yloc)
    • setUserDisplayColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setUserDisplayBackColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setLogoVisible( true|false) hide or show the Amcrest logo image overlay
    • setLogoLocation( xLoc, yLoc)
    • setLogoFilename( “osd.bmp”) your camera must support allowing you to change this or it will do nothing.
    • setTimeDisplayVisible( true|false)
    • setTimeDisplayLocation( xLoc, yLoc)
    • setTimeDisplayColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setTimeDisplayBackColor( R, G, B, A)
    • setTimeDisplayFormat( “yyyy-M-dd hh:mm:ss t”) see the wiki link above for a table of valid format string entities.
    • note that there is a limit to the number of overlays the camera can “blend” into the encoding video. Check the capabilities below to find out what the limit is for your camera. They may all be different. My doorbell cam can only do 2 at once.
  • changed the logEvents() command to be showEvents() and it now shows the info in a window rather than just writing it to the log.
  • changed logMotionRegions() showMotionRegions() which also shows the list in a separate window rather than just writing it to the log.
  • showCapabilities() opens a window with most, but not all, of the capabilities of the camera listed. There are still some more to add
  • There are a LOT of other things I can add to this plugin that could be controlled. If you know of something else you’d like to be able to tweak in the cameras programmatically please let me know.
• Last Activity: A change to the Last Activity date handling. Previously if a Unit had never had any activity after being created it would show a last activity date of the time the program was last started. This caused confusion in list windows when sorted by date and is something I’ve been meaning to deal with forever. Now if a Unit has no last activity date it will display as “Never” in the list window, but be sorted as if the date had a total seconds property of 0. In other interfaces or via the scripting commands it will return a date with the earliest date/time that the normal unix date can hold so something like 1/7/1903 or whatever that is. So it will sort properly and no longer be confusing.
• Home Kit:
  • Updated the Home Kit libraries some but not all the way to current. They have made some significant changes in the most recent builds that break it completely for us in the short term though I”ll keep working on that. This is unlikely to either cause or cure any problems people may be having with it as the only changes were to the handling of Thermostats. Home Kit now always sets the Mode of the HVAAC to Auto. This is not due to anything that I can do anything about easily and is a decision that Apple has made. I may be able to override some of this handling to not accept those changes from the thermostat but only send them from XTension or something like that if it is a problem.
• Hue Plugin:
  • Hue Plugin: Fixed an issue where it could send continual updates for a sensor value even if the value had not changed.
  • Hue Plugin: Fixed an issue where the temperature format was not saved, sticking all readings in F.
• Video System:
  • Video Encoder Plugin: Added a checkbox so you can suppress logging of video encoding times if you wish.
  • Video: Removed error logging for stalled streams as this would fill the log if the camera was offline for any length of time. To log this information please implement the stalled script handler in the Interface Script and write to the log whatever information is helpful.
  • Video: “Orphaned” recordings that may have been left unencoded when the app quit are now properly encoded and managed when you next startup the app.
• Sysinfo Plugin:
  • System Info Plugin: no longer claims in it’s startup log message to be the Disk Space plugin.
  • Fixed an incorrect default link to the boot volume so that this will work without having to edit it each time.
• Internal Python:
  • Python: A symlink to the built in python3 version is now added to /usr/local/bin/pythonxt so if you wish to use the built in version for your own script you can just execute it via that command.
  • Python: XTension changes many environment variables in order to use it’s internal version of python. If you are running a system version of python in your own script from a shell in XTension this may cause errors or make it unable to find installed modules. You can now use a scripting command “revertENV()” in your script before invoking your shell script to reset the environment to the system default just before launching it which will solve most, but probably not all of these issues. Note that you should do this immediately before starting any shell script as XTension will change it again as needed when launching plugins.
• Web Remote:
  • Web Remote: New documentation of the hashing of web remote links to immediately go to a specific page or view. This can be useful if you are saving specific links as iOS shortcuts, or creating a Kiosk type application. This is not a new feature, but was never properly documented. Kiosk View and Hash Linking Info
  • Web Remote: Added several new scripting commands to control sessions in the web remote. This lets you programmatically change the view on a specific device to say, a video page or a View in response to motion or other event. Additionally you can script a popup alert or timed message in any color to display on all active sessions or only on specific ones. Scripting Web Remote
  • Web Remote: Added support for a resource folder that will be served as regular files through the web remote built in web server. This way if custom controls or other features you are adding need to load a specific image or other support file they can do so if you put it in the resources directory inside your XTension Database. Resource Server
  • Note that these changes have not been rolled into the mobile web remote plugin, only the desktop version.
• Plugin API:
  • A new key for the info.json file that will allow a plugin to receive any scripting command the user issues. This simplifies some kinds of plugin tasks at the expense that users script will not know if the command succeeded or not, all commands will just be sent and forgot. This does not affect regular using the app, only plugin developers.
  • Added the capability for plugins to display information in new text windows and to append to or change the display of one without opening a new window each time. This mostly affects plugin developers but I used it in the new and changed show info commands in the Amcrest API plugin above.
  • All plugins now log their version number in the startup message from the information stored in their info.json file. This will keep them from always being wrong as I forget to update it in 2 places instead of just 1.
• Hubitat Plugin:
  • Hubitat: Added entries to the “insert” toolbar menu for the central scene Held, and Released events to make it easier to script these without having to visit the wiki to look up the specifics.
  • Hubitat: Added support for Energy and Usage units. If a device reports these values a Unit will be created for them.
  • More updates and changes to the new handling of “string” data types.If there is a number at the beginning of the String value then that is parsed and sent to Xtension as the value for the Unit. The description is no longer changed to the raw value but rather a new Unit Property called “Raw Value” is added and kept updated to the full text of the string. If there is no number in the string, or if it just does not begin with a number, then the value of the Unit is set to 0 and the default label for the unit is set to the raw value string as well as the same unit property. No default label is set if there is a number at the beginning of the string so that user formatting and suffix will be honored normally
  • Hubitat: Some devices from the Hubitat will now have more descriptive, or less long winded names when created by default. This will mostly effect the Thermostat units but some others can be made better with this too. This does not affect Units already created, and you can always manually edit the unit’s name once it’s created to be whatever you like in either case.
  • Hubitat: The list of supported commands for each Unit is now saved to a Unit Property so you can see all the commands the device supports directly. You may still have to discover what parameters are required, if any, but this will make it easier to do things to the Units via the sendDeviceCommand()
  • Hubitat: Push messages from the Hubitat that are sent when a software update is started, or when the device is about to reboot to install a software update will now just log that information rather than generate an “unknown push message” error in the log.
• Software Defined Radio Plugin: Fixed the incorrect wiki link in the interface and added a link to the github pages for more documentation if desired.
• Scripting Dictionary:
  • NEW: the Enumerated Value verb now accepts an optional parameter “for” and will return the correct enumeration for the value that you pass or an error if the enumeration is out of range. This is especially useful in the ON script of a unit as you can now check the enumeration for the future value to see what it is going to be when the script is done running. The direct parameter of unit name is now also made optional and if you dont specify it then it will use the value for thisUnit making it easier to script these in a units on or off script. For example: write log enumerated value for (future value) would write the enumerated value for the new value being passed to the On script.
  • NEW: The change future value verb now also accepts enumerations just like the regular set value verbs so you can issue a change future value to “high” instead of just knowing what the numerical value is.
• Xtension UI:
  • New: Each unit will get a new Unit Property called Created with the date the unit was created. You can add this to any List view by control clicking in the headers and selecting create custom column. Then you can sort lists by the date the Unit was created and not just the last activity date. For new Units this is set as they are created and then never changed. For existing Units the date is taken from the creation date of their folder within the database. This seems to work pretty well for most units most of the time, but there may be a date in the past where you restored a database or otherwise performed an action on it that would have reset those dates. This is still the best I can do but keep in mind that older Units may not show the date they were actually created, but the last time you zipped and moved the database or something like that.
• XTdb: XTdb “meta” units now set their “thisUnit” value properly when being updated so that you can filter the log by them like any other Unit.
• Control By Web Plugin:
  • Added support for sending user/password info to devices that have this level of security turned on.
  • Added a checkbox for “Automatically Create New Units In XTension” so that you can disable this after you have gotten the Units you desire and not have to keep the ones you are not using at this time.
  • Added a checkbox for “Ignore VIN Values” the control by web devices all send their input voltage. This might be useful or it might just be a value that is constantly updated as the value shifts by a tenth of a volt causing extra load and log spam. You can check this to ignore those values and neither create a Unit to hold it nor send updates for it’s changing.
  • I’ve added some checks and trimming of the unit names as they are being changed into addresses to try to fix some potential issues with creating units in XTension. This is not an issue I can duplicate so am just throwing stuff at the wall to see what happens.

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 CM19, CM15, ZTroller or the various Smarthome X10 interfaces please download the legacy plugins package from here and install the ones you need via the “Install Plugin” menu item of the “Database” menu.