[implemented]Auto discovery for sensors and actuators would be nice

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Auto discovery for sensors and actuators would be nice… Do you have a plan for that?

@sweetpi

@fahrettine said:

Auto discovery for sensors and actuators would be nice… Do you have a plan for that?

i like the idea to press a button and the system shows me all new devices which i could add to my environment.
but i dont think that this is possible because the universe of potential devices is endless (433mhz, gpio, z-wave, … take a look at the plugin list)

The endless devices shouldn’t be a problem if the plugins implement a uniform interface for obtaining a list of detected devices. If my homeduino would publish the detected 433mhz devices, let me manually adjust as needed and save as real devices, setup would be a walk in the park. Not that copy pasting from the debug log and adding some JSON is a big hurdle; but it would lower the threshold for less technical users.

And it would the same for any plugin that supports the same method.

But I don’t really have time nor skills to contribute so I’ll stop saying “its easy” and go away now…

@beikeland said:

The endless devices shouldn’t be a problem if the plugins implement a uniform interface for obtaining a list of detected devices.

Exactly. This is what I had in mind as well. The problem with homeduino is, however, that sometimes multiple protocol candidates match as the protocols have similar charactersistics. So it would be great, if alternative device types for an discovered entity can be presented along with a description - which could contain the debug message with the discovered values, for example.

• Pimatic should provide a user function to initiate an auto-discovery
• A discovery request shall be propagated to all plugins
• Plugins supporting auto-discovery shall reply with a list of device candidates. Some device candidates may be alternatives for a single entity discovered (see homeduino discussion above).
• The user than can select the device candidates which should be added to the config on the fly.

@sweetpi This sounds like a great add-on feature for v0.9 device editing. May be we can collaborate on this?!

maybe it is possible that the user already tells pimatic which device and which brand to look for (switch, shutter, pir, contact / elro, kaku, intertechno etc…) so there is only a search within the appropriate protocols and matching brands.
if nothing matches, then there could be a selection page where the user can choose from the debug output and possible devices.

@leader21 i like your idea!

@mwittig Yes, would be nice to have this in v0.9.

I had the same in mind (https://github.com/pimatic/pimatic/issues/434#issuecomment-70656293):

We need a device auto discover service (would for example replace debug outputs from homeduino and pimatic-max) anyway:
Discover Button => all plugins scan for devices => User gets a list of devices => User adapts config (if adaptable) and adds device to config.

The api for adding devices on the fly is already there in the v0.9 branch. So if you like to start the auto discover feature it would be cool. Then I can focus on the device config gui (in the mobile-frontend development branch).

@beikeland said:

The endless devices shouldn’t be a problem if the plugins implement a uniform interface for obtaining a list of detected devices.

do we speak just about homeduino devices or also non-homeduino devices like z-wave, fritz, max, …?

@dk00000 said:

do we speak just about homeduino devices or also non-homeduino devices like z-wave, fritz, max, …?

Don’t get me wrong, i’m no dev, but that whould be up to the individual plugins. If you follow mwittig’s post below mine, you’ll see that pimatic provides the framework for handling it, and if f.ex. the z-wave plugin is updated it will be able to suggest whatever devies it has seen. In essence every plugin will also need to be updated. But not all devices will be possible to autodetect either.

implemented with v0.9 autodiscovery function