New plugin pimatic-mesh

---

A plugin for interconnecting Pimatic systems.

This plugin is based on pimatic-remote from mwittig and is extended with devices and a multi-remote capability.

The pimatic-mesh plugin connects one or more remote Pimatic systems to the Pimatic system of this plugin. The supported mesh devices are switch, contact, dimmer, presence, temperature and variable. The remote switch and dimmer can be controlled from the switch and dimmer mesh device. From all devices you get data like state, level, etc, depending on the device type.
Variables from remote devices can be obtained via the mesh variables device.

There are two typical use cases for this plugin.

1. When you want to migrate from a node v4 system to a node v8 or v10 system, sometimes one or more plugins are not supporting node v8 or v10 and these plugin are blocking the upgrade. With this plugin you can leave the ‘node v4 only’ plugins and devices, on the old system and use pimatic-mesh to connect them to the new system.
   Because you create new device types for the (remote) devices, you need to update the device config with the new mesh device classes. The mesh device ID and Name can stay the same, so rules do not have to change.

2. Create a distributed Pimatic system. The plugin can be installed on more than 1 system and so you can distribute complexity and get flexibility for future migration. Mesh devices can be link to each other system, but be careful not to create loops.

Its a first release. It works on my node v4 and node v10 systems, but it is software.
Let me know if you need any extra features or if you detected bugs.

Seems you are a machine!!!

I have my old rpi running with some homeduino devices. I am using the rest api to control the switches via my productive system. But your plugin is a really elegant way to handle it. I will give it a try but only for test.

Tested successfully with some switches. Works really nice!

I treid with the temperature from the sysinfo plugin, but i cant seem to transfer that to my main pimatic. With a switch it works instantly.

@patricknooijen
For a a variable like sysinfo, you need to use the MeshVariables device.
Use the SysInfo device id for remoteDeviceId and the attributeId for remoteAttributeId without the '$'
Example: i’ve got also a Sysinfo Device with the ID ‘syssensor’ and one of the attributes is called 'Cpu’
The configuration of the MesVariables device is: remoteDeviceId = syssensor and remoteAttributeId = Cpu.
And the info is updated when the remote attribute changes. You can force that by edit and save the device (without changing anything)

Thanks! That works like a charme!

That’s a really good idea, pimatic-mesh. 👍
I just installed a second pimatic system on Ubuntu 18.04 on Proxmox (thanks @OrTiN), now I have to see how I set it up.
Is it possible to integrate the “discover devices” function? It would be nice if you could use “discover” to transfer devices from another pimatic system.

Two more questions:
Pimatic-Mesh must be installed on both/ all pimatic systems?

The remote system is always the other pimatic system, i.e. where you are not in the browser at the moment? Is that correct?

Hi, in your case the plugin needs to be installed on the new pi.
The old pi is managed via the api and yes the remote system is 'the other system’
For the discovery function I will look.

@bertreb
In the meantime I have done some research on pimatic mesh.
It will be a lot of work if I want to get everything across.
Just changing the rules will be a feat. I now have over 2500 lines in the config.

The mesh plugin was not designed for full transfer of one pimatic to an other pimatic.
Because than you need also the conversion of the rules. This is partly a name conversion, 1-to-1 to the renaming I use for the mesh devices. But devices can have specific action providers/handlers. Thats not easy to convert. It very plugin specific. Its better to leave those plugins on the old system or reinstall on the new system.

Migrating a whole pimatic to a new a via the mesh plugin is also complex because you would assume that all the different plugins and devices could be mapped on just the devices from the Mesh plugin.

My idea was that the old Pimatic is still working with his own plugins, devices and rules.
The other / new pimatic is using the old pimatic as an edge or legacy device.

I got the discovery working for as far I can test. The discovery is at bit complex because of the issue ‘mapping every to the mesh devices’, but the trivial device classes are discovered.
Let me know if you want to test it in this alfa version.

I released version 0.1.8 with the discover function.

@bertreb
Thank you, that was very quick. With the new feature you added, it’s easy to integrate the incompatible devices into the new system.
I have already started to transfer the rules and remove them from the “old pimatic system”. Also the devices running directly on the new system and the needed variables.
The new pimatic system on Proxmox runs really well and fast. And so far I have not noticed any problems. So I will transfer everything that works to the new pimatic-vm-system.

@bertreb
I have one more question. My outdoor light sensor is still working at the moment.
Unfortunately I can’t get this sensor into mesh pimatic. Neither via Discover Devices nor by hand. I have already created a variable for the device in the old pimatic. But I can’t get them into the new Mesh pimatic via Mesh pimatic either. What could be the reason for this?
By the way, I basically don’t get all devices displayed when I run Discover Devices.

Hi, the discovery function shows only a device when it can be mapped on one of the mesh-devices. Standard devices classes and devices with attributes like state, dimmer, temperature, etc, lead to a discovery. All the custom classes or attribute names not, to discover them I must patch the plugin for a specific device type (is not optimal).

The variables device is flexible and can map all variables from the old to the mesh device.
The light sensor is not standard in the sensor attribute list for discovery. Its the ‘lux’ attribute?
If you post the specific variable and how you configured it in the plugin, I can help you further

@bertreb

my plugin:

{
      "plugin": "bh1750"
    },

my device:

{
      "device": "/dev/i2c-1",
      "address": "0x23",
      "interval": 10000,
      "id": "my-sensor",
      "name": "bh1750 Licht",
      "class": "BH1750Sensor",
      "echo": {}
    },

@bertreb
I have found this old howto and i will test it. I think this is a solution for my case.
I will report later if it run.

If you want to test the mesh plugin you should this readme but perhaps you are working on something else ?

@bertreb
I’m sorry, but I don’t know what the problem is. I was looking for a solution to get the brightness value of a BH1750 sensor from the first pimatic system into the second pimatic system.

Pimatic-mesh is a good idea. But I cannot get the values of my light sensor from the first pimatic system into the second pimatic with pimatic-mesh.
I have tried mqtt now to transmit the sensor data. The solution via mqtt works in my case.

Ok, thats fine.

Im just asking because you couldn’t get the value via the Mssh plugin, so I’m checking if there a bug.
The config in the Mesh plugin to get the Lux variable should be.
If you could to test it, because i’m curious about the reason.

{
  "id": "light-lux",
  "name": "light lux",
  "class": "PimaticRemoteVariables",
  "remotePimatic": "pimatic-name", # name for your remote pimatic you choose in the plugin config
  "variables": [
    {
      "name": "lx",  # You can choose what you want
      "remoteDeviceId": "bh1750-Licht",  # must be the ID not the name of the remote sensor (lower and uppercase must be te same)
      "remoteAttributeId": "lx", # must be the attribute name of the remote sensor, it seems lx
      "type": "number"
    }
  ],
  "xAttributeOptions": []
}

I have tried a few more things but I get no values in the second pimatic.
Here the device in the config:

      "remotePimatic": "pimatic",
      "variables": [
        {
          "name": "my-sensor",
          "remoteDeviceId": "my-sensor",
          "remoteAttributeId": "lx",
          "type": "number"
        }
      ],
      "xAttributeOptions": [],
      "id": "bh1750",
      "name": "BH1750",
      "class": "PimaticMeshVariables"
    },

I noticed something else. I took a Sonoff 4CH with a BME280 over DeviceDiscover for testing. The device didn’t show me any values, and I only see the placeholders for humidity and temperature. For pressure it doesn’t show me a placeholder.
The automatically transferred device:

{
      "class": "PimaticMeshTemperatures",
      "name": "[pimatic] 4CH Sensor",
      "id": "_pimatic_4ch-sensor"
      "remotePimatic": "pimatic",
      "remoteDeviceId": "4ch-sensor"
      "xAttributeOptions": []
    }