Request: Change state of device in API

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Yes, I know you can change the state with API, but that’s not exactly what I want.
Changing the state in the API should have a other name, because it is used for turning some device on or off.
What I need is changing the state of the devce without triggering rules. Just a option to change a device because the state in Pimatic does not refelect the real world situation.

Example : you turn on a RF device, but somehow the RF device was powerless or the RF signal got lost. Now you have a RF device wich is actually OFF but pimaitc thinks it is ON. Just turning it OFF in pimatic could trigger rules you don’t want to te be triggered (or sends RF signals you don’t need/want). Therefore I want to correct this situation in the API just to tell pimatic that the current state is incorrect.

Would this be possible to add to the API ?

@koffienl
thats exactly what i am looking for. my problem is the following:
i have 2 roller shutter and i use one dummy slider to control both shutters. if i control the shutters directly (at the wall, or with the individual sliders) then the shutter have another position than the dummy slider. all right. for example: the dummy slider is at 100% and the real positions are at 30% and 70%. at a certain time my rule wants to open the shutters via the dummy slider to 100%. nothing happens. this is because the dummy slider is already at 100%. but the real roller shutters stay at 30% and 70%. so i need a possibility to set the dummy slider during the day to a certain position without triggering rules (or is it possible to set the dummy slider to null?). if i would just set the dummy slider to 50% than the roller blinds would go from 30% to 50% and 70% to 50%.

cheers

It’s difficult to implement, because the rule condition already has the “wrong value” in this case and the new value must be emitted any way to correct the condition, update the frontend and so on…

We really would need WHEN ... IF ... THEN .. rules for that.

What do you mean with WHEN…IF…THEN… Rules?
Do you mean
If…then…else…?

I thought first, a solution maybe to use a variable in your rule to disable it, while manually updating the device state:

IF device is turned on and $ruleEnabled = 1
THEN ...

and then do the following to correct the state:

set $ruleEnabled to 0
turn device on
set $ruleEnabled to 1

However this triggers the rule on setting $ruleEnabled to 1. The problem is the rule gets executed every time the whole condition does get true, regardless which of the two events turned to true.

There is the proposal for ECA rules (https://github.com/pimatic/pimatic/issues/135#issuecomment-44092659). With them we could solve the dilemma by using the rule:

WHEN device is turned on
IF $ruleEnabled = 1
THEN ...

so only the predicates / events in the WHEN part trigger the rule and it is only executed if the IF part evaluates to true.

EDIT: What you can already do is:

IF trigger: device is turned on and $ruleEnabled = 1
THEN ...

that should work, as long you only have one predicated “that matters”. If you have multiple predicates you would have to use two rules:

1. rule, that sets a variable to true if the rule condition is true

IF device is turned on and ...
THEN set $executeMyAction = 1 and after 1s set  $executeMyAction = 0

2. rule only executes the action, if the rule is enabled.

IF trigger: $executeMyAction = 1 and $ruleEnabled = 1
THEN ...

Why should the rules be executed? Just a change in he backend to change the state without triggering any rules.

@koffienl said:

Just a change in he backend to change the state without triggering any rules.

Would love that!
I asked for the same thing here http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/694/set-shellswitch-attribute-without-executing-relevant-commands