MobiLinc (Android) now supports TASKER!

[InsteonNut]

Hi Everyone,

 

We are happy to announce that MobiLinc (Android) 1.2.4 is now available from Google Play. In this update we now support the popular automation app, Tasker!

 

Simply update MobiLinc to 1.2.4 and MobiLinc will be included in Tasker's list of 3rd party plug-ins. Here are just a few examples of what you can do with Tasker and MobiLinc:

 

- Use AutoVoice to add voice control to your home automation setup.

- Create location based areas to automate your setup, like opening your door or garage door when you arrive home.

- Turn your lights on/off at a certain time of the day.

- Detect when your phone logs into or out of your Wi-Fi network to automate lights, and other scenes.

- Use the Tasker app to create custom scene layouts for a truly custom interface powered by MobiLinc.

- Use the Zoom app to create custom widgets and other home page layouts using Tasker and MobiLinc.

- Many, many more options and combinations.

 

There are hundreds of possibilities and we can't wait to see what you come up with!

 

As you work to create your perfect automation setup, film a video of it all working and post back to the forum showing others how you use Tasker and MobiLinc. We'll take the best videos and post them on our Facebook page and feature them on our website and Google Play store!

 

UPDATE: MobiLinc user, Whitney, posted a great getting started with MobiLinc and Tasker walkthrough. Check it out if you are looking to get started:

 

UPDATE 2:

Check out Anthony's (TinozPlace) blog for an in-depth exploration of how he's using MobiLinc and Tasker:

http://wordpress.tinozplace.com/2013/10/22/an-intro-to-mobilinc-and-insteon-with-tasker/

We even learned a few new tricks!

 

Wes

[jmed999]

Thanks for the update Wes!

 

Where can we go to learn more about Tasker? I would love to use my phones location (home wifi) to control certain things in the house, ie. Elk alarm system.

 

Thanks again for all the hard work!

[iostream212]

I recently took some primers from youtube. Search for tasker. I found the beginner guides by Armando Ferreira both insightful and humorous.

 

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk 2

[Physpher]

Wes,

 

I like how you guys have added tasker support, that makes my list of tasks much smaller! However, I noticed that we are not able to pass on level variables. Am I missing it or would that be a possibility in the future? I use my voice to dim lights to specific levels (eg. "dining room light on 30 percent" or "bedroom light 5 percent") this would make my tasker library much smaller. Thanks in advance!

 

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

[ISYhbsh01]

Hi WES,

 

Thank you very much for this upgrade and for the excellent work put into this. The potential of what could be done with Tasker integration is really limitless. I started playing with this as soon as I saw the announcement & downloaded the update. It’s truly amazing.

 

Here are a couple of observations:

 

1. It works flawlessly with my ISY. However I also have a SmartLinc in my office, which seems to be supported as I can pick that profile & select the device I have there, but nothing is working. Tasker widgets to turn the device on or off don’t work, and it also doesn’t work when I run the task from within tasker either. Is SmartLinc possibly not supported?

 

2. I know this is the first day out and this upgrade is truly amazing, so I am just asking not complaining… It seems that MobiLinc integration is only available on the task side but not on the context side. Is that correct? And if so are there any plans in the future/near future to add that functionality? For example, in the thread about push notification support for iOS, I wrote that with tasker integration on Android you can setup tasker to have push notification. Of course if Mobilinc cannot be used as a context in tasker my statement would be incorrect.

 

3. Again, I am just asking not complaining: in this forum post linked here: http://forum.universal-devices.com/viewtopic.php?p=84289#p84289 you had mentioned that variable support is planned for the next MobiLinc/Android release with Tasker plug-in support. Was there a change in plans and can you give an update on what the plan is for variable support in future/near future?

 

Thank you very much!

[InsteonNut]

jmed999 - This is about the best guide that we've seen on Tasker: http://www.pocketables.com/tag/beginners-guide-to-tasker

 

Physpher - This is correct, variable passthrough isn't currently supported. We're watching the rollout of the update to see how folks use the new Tasker capability. We might add this in a future release.

 

hbsh01 -

1. Open MobiLinc and verify that you can still talk to your SmartLinc. I suspect that an IP Address or port forwarding setting has changed preventing MobiLinc from reaching your SmartLinc. We specifically tested MobiLinc and SmartLinc with our Tasker update to ensure it was compatible.

2. This is correct. In order for context to work, we'd have to maintain a connection to the ISY 24/7 from the mobile device which would kill your battery. Our solution is instead GCM for Android (PUSH) that we're working on. GCM will require MobiLinc Connect to appear like you have real-time status without draining your battery.

3. We opted to postpone variable support in order to get our Tasker update out to the users. Variable support is still on our to-do list.

 

Wes

[Physpher]

Thanks for clarifying Wes. I cannot wait to have variables! It will make many people's lives much easier (and cooler to show off to friends and family)

 

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

[kal357]

never mind I got it

[MWareman]

If you are looking for a hack for contexts, look at using notifymyandroid via the networking module on the ISY (NMA uses Google cloud messaging for power efficiency). It plugs into Tasker and you can trigger Tasker contexts from that (keywords in the notification). I currently have a Tasker context that is driven by my garage door being open, a state Tasker finds out about via NMA.

 

Also, Wes advised me in a different thread that you can sort of hack variables into the system by having Tasker call MobilLinc which runs a 'Then' branch on a program that sets the variable. Seems to work well for me using Tasker to geofence my house and trigger set a variable on the ISY until Android natively supports geofencing and MobiLinc picks up on it (like on IOS).

 

MobiLinc, Tasker, NotifyMyAndroid and ISY in combination allow some very potent stuff to be done.

[ISYhbsh01]

hbsh01 -

1. Open MobiLinc and verify that you can still talk to your SmartLinc. I suspect that an IP Address or port forwarding setting has changed preventing MobiLinc from reaching your SmartLinc. We specifically tested MobiLinc and SmartLinc with our Tasker update to ensure it was compatible.

 

Hi WES,

 

Thanks for your detailed response.

 

I didn't have a chance to reply till now. Here is some background & what I have noticed in the past two weeks:

 

About a day or two before the mobilinc update was released I changed my smartlinc password & updated the password in mobilinc and everything was working fine. On May 28 when the update was released & when I originally wrote that post, what I saw was that when I used the Mobilinc app or widget directly I was able to successfully control my SmartLinc device, but when I used Tasker it did not work with the smartlinc but did work with the ISY. Hence my question if the smartlinc is also supported for tasker integration.

 

However after a couple of days I did start to get sometimes error messages when using a smartlinc device widget that the user ID and/or password is incorrect, but when I went into the app itself I was able to control the device without a problem. After playing around a bit I noticed, that what seems to be happening is that whenever I tried to use a widget for my device connected to the smartlinc while the selected profile in the app was the ISY I got that error message. When the selected profile in the app is the smartlinc, the widget works without a problem. I cannot say with 100% certainty that this is the problem, but I am 99% certain that that’s what it is. At least ever since I came to that conclusion I was able to reproduce this 100% percent of the time, that if the smartlinc profile is selected the widget works, and when it’s not it doesn’t work. It seems that this this is a bug introduced with the new update as I have never had this issue before.

 

Now that I noticed that issue, I thought that it’s quite possible that what happened on May 28 the day the Tasker update was released was a result of the same issue. It could very well be that when I used the mobilinc widget the smartlinc profile happened to be selected and that's why it worked. While when I tried to use tasker the ISY profile was selected. Ever since I came to the above conclusion I tested it many times & got the same consistent results: When the smartlinc profile was selected both the mobilinc widget & takser worked, and when the ISY profile was selected both didn’t work.

 

As I wrote this post I decided to check out what would happen the other way around, if an ISY device widget would work when the smartlinc profile is selected. I tested it now a couple of times and the ISY widget always worked even if the smartlinc profile was selected. So it’s only the smartlinc widget that doesn’t work when the ISY profile is selected.

 

Please let me know your thoughts on this as it is pretty frustrating to have to go into the app to change the profile every time I want to control the smartlinc device. My home where I have all my Insteon devices is where I use the ISY so this is the profile that’s selected most of the time. In my office I have the smartlinc with only one appliancelinc to control the a/c.

 

Thank you.

[InsteonNut]

hbsh01,

 

Thank you for all the details. That helps, but unfortunately, I am unable to reproduce your results. If I have the ISY or SmartLinc profile selected, all widgets/Tasker items work as expected.

 

I suspect that perhaps the SmartLinc profile isn't healthy.

 

Try deleting that profile and recreating it to see if that has any effect. If not, then I would recommend a full uninstall and reinstall of the MobiLinc app just to make absolutely certain that we're not getting hit with corrupt data somewhere.

 

Wes

[ISYhbsh01]

Hi WES,

 

I deleted the profile which didn't help, and then uninstalled & reinstalled the app, I still have the same issue.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[arw01]

Sometimes, when the problems get weird, I really, really think about shipping my phone!

 

Last wierd problem I had was the update to the operating system was corrupt in some way and required hard reset and re-install of that first to fix the problem.

[Xathros]

hbsh01, Wes-

 

I wonder if the credentials being different for ISY/Smartlinc make a difference. Wes, is it possible that you are using the same user/pass for your ISY and Smartlinc making the profile switch make no difference ?

 

Just a thought. I've done NO testing on this at all.

 

-Xathros

[InsteonNut]

Hi Xathros,

 

Credentials in my tests are different. In either case it shouldn't matter. The creds are stored in the individual profile which the Tasker/Widget item references. There shouldn't be any cross pollination occurring, but stranger things have happened. This is a scenario that we specifically coded and tested for and confirmed that it does work. Unfortunately we haven't been able to reproduce hbsh01 issue as described on our end.

 

Wes

[ISYhbsh01]

hbsh01, Wes-

 

I wonder if the credentials being different for ISY/Smartlinc make a difference. Wes, is it possible that you are using the same user/pass for your ISY and Smartlinc making the profile switch make no difference ?

 

Just a thought. I've done NO testing on this at all.

 

-Xathros

That's an interesting thought. As I mentioned, I did change my password on the SmartLinc about a day or two before the tasker integration update was released, which was when my problems started. Before the password change both password were indeed the same while now they are not.

 

I will make both passwords the same when I get a chance & see if this solves the problem.

[ISYhbsh01]

Hi WES & Xathros,

 

As strange as it sounds that did the trick! Here are the results of my testing:

 

I changed back my Smartlinc password to the same password as the ISY, I updated the password in Mobilinc, and the problem went away & I was able to use the smartlinc widget even when the ISY profile was selected in the app. I then changed back the Smartlinc password to my new password & the smartlinc widget again stopped working when the ISY profile was selected in the app. I then went into the ISY Admin Console & changed the ISY's password to be the same as the smartlinc's new password, and sure enough the problem went away again!

 

I then decided to test to see what's going to happen if the user ID's are not the same even if the passwords are the same. So I changed the Smartlinc's user ID and the problem came back. I changed back the user ID to be the same as the ISY and the problem disappeared.

 

Please let me know if you would like me to do or test anything in order to figure out why this is happening on my side while you couldn’t reproduce this on your end.

 

Thank you.

[Xathros]

Are the credentials or the selected profile stored in the widget somehow? Maybe deleting and recreating the widget with the new password...

 

-Xathros

[ISYhbsh01]

Are the credentials or the selected profile stored in the widget somehow? Maybe deleting and recreating the widget with the new password...

 

-Xathros

 

I had tried deleting the profile and uninstalling the app which removes the widget and that didn't help.

[InsteonNut]

hbsh01 - I've been able to reproduce a variant on my end of this scenario. We're looking into it.

 

Wes

[Rob]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to get Mobilinc working reliably with Tasker and Autolocation. After a fair bit of troubleshooting, it seems as though any time I make a program change in ISY, I must open Mobilinc and allow it to synchronize before it will run anything triggered by the Tasker plugin. After that initial resynch, Tasker events run like a champ.

 

To verify, I made a program change (added a period to the end of a comment on a totally unrelated program) and saved it. Turned on my phone, opened Tasker and manually ran a test event. Nothing happens. Opened Mobilinc, waited for it to resynch, and manually ran the test event in Tasker successfully. Turned phone off, waited a bit, turned it back on and manually triggered the test event again successfully.

 

I signed up for a trial of Mobilinc Connect thinking that may help but I still have the same problem. Not a big deal perhaps, but it doesn't seem like that should be normal behavior. I'm also going to be setting this up on additional phones, whose users won't likely have any reason or inclination to open Mobilinc very often.

[InsteonNut]

Hi Rob,

 

This is expected. What you are running into is how the Admin Console saves programs back to the ISY. When you make changes to a program and save, there is no guarantee that the program ID used for the program before the edit will be the same after the edit. Further more, it's possible that other program ID's may shift, although less common. After editing your program list you'll need to ensure MobiLinc has a current "snapshot" of the program list to make sure things like Widgets and Tasker scenarios operate correctly.

 

Wes

[Rob]

Ah, OK that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification!

[InsteonNut]

Sure thing Rob!

 

Wes

[Xathros]

Wes-

 

Is this behavior also expected on the iOS version of Mobilinc?

 

-Xathros