Updating sensor in database, even if value is the same

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Hey everyone

I noticed a pimatic behavior, wich looks a litte strange:
If I have a sensor wich reports the same value repeadetly, those updates are not written to the database. I do not know, if the sensor is still online, as the last update might be hours or days ago. Additionaly sometimes it is good to know if the old value was reported as constant or no update was received. Is it possible to configure pimatic to save updated but unchanged values (maybe for specific devices only, as this might be intended to reduce db writes)?

@Anduril See https://github.com/pimatic/pimatic/issues/721#issuecomment-145768810 - second post in particular

thank you @mwittig, hope @sweetpi will include this in a future version.

@AnduriI what kind of device do you use? It doeswork for some device attributes (https://github.com/pimatic/pimatic/issues/262#issuecomment-56278729) however not (yet) for variables.

at the moment I’m working with temperature devices, but in future will add door sensors.

I forgot: I noticed that problem when testing a new battery powered mysensors node. I wanted it to send battery level and voltage. It was maybe send, but not updated in pimatic as the value was the same for longer time. Is it a problem of mysensors devices?

@Anduril Look at my github issue @mwittig also refered above.
It is not a problem of mysensors I think.

@see github issue 721 - second post in particular

I can produce this error also by updating variables via the API. As @sweetpi mentioned, the problem is, that currently a variable only emits an update event, if it changed. Hoping @sweetpi or another pimatic developer will find a solution for this soon. Meanwhile I have a workaround by adding programmatically some small jitter to my value on sensor side which is rounded away on pimatic device.

I’ve changed the behaviour in pimatic v0.8.88. It should now work as expected.

@sweetpi I started now trying the mysensors plugin. I think this plugin have the same problem, not updating when sensor values arrive which are unchanged.

@sweetpi said:

I’ve changed the behaviour in pimatic v0.8.88. It should now work as expected.

Actually I checked the github and was astonished that you reverted this change in v0.8.89. I couldn’t found a notice about the reason, so can you please explain. I was satisfied with the solution in v0.8.88 (and also wish to make this too in mySensors plugin)

@sweetpi: Thanks for clarifying this.

You wrote on github: Because it leaded to an infinite loop in some cases: #727
While the inital change was reverted in v0.8.89, a better version was introduced in v0.8.90: 76db56a

So I guess that also in mySensors care must be taken to do the right corrections. I am looking forward that any qualified developer is willing to make this.