Cannot see Bond nodes as 'devices' through the ISY Portal

[rwsani99]

I have the PG3 Bond Node server running on my Polisy and all nodes are visible and working well in ISY programs.  I have 8 Somfy shades so each node has the actions of Open and Close.  On the PG3 dashboard, it is Connected and all appears well.  

But I would like to add spoken commands for each node (i.e. shade) through the ISY Portal using the Connectivity>Amazon-Echo interface.  Through this interface I can see all nodes from my other servers such as ELK and Climacell Weather.  All the ELK and Climacell nodes appear in the 'Device' list of the Portal>Connectivity>Amazon-Echo interface.

I realize Bond has their own direct Alexa skill that could give me verbal control of my shades, but I would prefer to use the ISY/Alexa interface because this has been more reliable than most other Alexa skills I've used.  And by sending all commands through my ISY Portal I have a better chance of my ISY Polisy knowing the correct state of my blinds.

I can see and control these Bond bridge nodes through the UD Mobile app, so clearly the ISY Portal is aware of them.  Has anyone else tried creating spoken commands for Bond bridge nodes through the ISY Portal>Connectivity>Amazon-Echo interface?  Any ideas I should try?

Appreciate any help.

[Geddy]

Not sure if this would be an issue that the node server developer (@Goose66) could help with or if you might need to start a support ticket to have them check the portal setup. 

I'm not entirely sure you can conclude that if UD Mobile sees it then Portal is aware of it. That might be an answer @Javi could provide. I don't think that UD Mobile is seeing the devices through portal, but just using the portal access to contact the ISY directly so don't think that assumption is a straight correlation for UD Mobile = Portal awareness. 

 

[Javi]

It's likely the nodes do not have a "hint",  the node server Developer could add "hint" or it can be done manually.  However this requires that the node commands definitions conform to the device type command names (such as on (DON), off (DOF), etc.)  A work around is using programs or variables.

[rwsani99]

Thanks for the input, Geddy & Javi.  I certainly know little to nothing about the internals of node servers, but just trying to follow up on Javi's comments:  From the Event Viewer I can see the following command(s) is issued when I 'open' a shade from the ISY.

Fri 06/17/2022 07:31:35 PM : [D2D EVENT   ] Event [n003_036b4412] [ST] [100] uom=97 prec=0

Fri 06/17/2022 07:31:35 PM : [n003_036b4412]       ST 100 (uom=97 prec=0)

which is a bit different from the DON and DOFF commands that I see with the ELK node server.  But again, the above command sequence may be completely normal for an OPEN of a shade through the Bond node server.

And as for the Hint value, from looking at the Node screen for the Bond node server in PG3 each node has a value in the Hint field.  The Primary Node for the Bond Bridge has Hint: 0x010e0100 and all 8 Shade nodes (non-primary) have Hint: 17040640

I don't know if these snippets are helpful or just noise in this discussion. As always, thanks for everyone's input.

[rwsani99]

On a slightly more basic level, none of the Bond nodes appear in the ISY Portal Device Hint Editor.  The Hint Editor can see all of my Climacell and ELK nodes, but none of the Bond nodes.  Maybe this will be a useful clue for developer, Goose66.

[Goose66]

I am not exactly sure what they "ISY Portal Device Hint Editor" is or where it can be accessed. I came away from my last conversation on the Slack channel regarding hints a couple of months ago with the understanding that hints were dead, were never used by anything, and could be ignored.

[rwsani99]

27 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

I am not exactly sure what they "ISY Portal Device Hint Editor" is or where it can be accessed. I came away from my last conversation on the Slack channel regarding hints a couple of months ago with the understanding that hints were dead, were never used by anything, and could be ignored.

Thanks Goose66, I really know nothing about the Device Hint Editor either.  I've seen it mentioned in a few posts so I was noting that this is another 'tool' that I thought could see all(?) nodes but none of the Bond nodes appear in this drop down list either.  The Device Hint Editor is accessed through the ISY Portal->Select tool...->Connectivity->Device Hint Editor. 

But yes, my real question is why none of my Bond nodes are visible through the ISY Portal->Select tool...->Connectivity->Aamazon Echo device list, but all my ELK and Climacell nodes are.  I can't even see a use for the Climacell nodes to be in the Amazon Echo device list since they do not have on/off functions.  But the Bond nodes could in theory be sent on/off commands through the Echo interface.  

Thanks

[Goose66]

Here are the Bond node hints:

CEILING_FAN: hint = 0x01020100 # Residential/Controller/Class A Motor Controller
LIGHT: hint = 0x01020900 # Residential/Controller/Dimmer
NODID_LIGHT: hint = 0x01021000 # Residential/Controller/Non-Dimming Light
GENERIC: hint = 0x01040200 # Residential/Relay/On/Off Power Switch
FIREPLACE: # (same as generic)
SHADE: hint = 0x01040500 # Residential/Relay/Open/Close

If @bmercier or whomever is in charge of the Alexa interface wants to comment, let me know and I can change the hints to support this functionality. Like I mentioned, it's my understanding that if they are being used here, this is the only place, so I can make the values comply with whatever is necessary. 

Unfortunately I am moving, and this is going to throw a huge wrench into much of my testing and conversion of node servers. Maybe Bond will be one that survives the move.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Goose66

[Javi]

1 hour ago, Goose66 said:

I am not exactly sure what they "ISY Portal Device Hint Editor" is or where it can be accessed. I came away from my last conversation on the Slack channel regarding hints a couple of months ago with the understanding that hints were dead, were never used by anything, and could be ignored.

They are used for MobiLink and Alexa/Google Assistant. The user should be able to change this if they are not set.  They are not required for UD-Mobile/Admin-Console.  In my opinion there are too many parameter variations for this to work well to set UI Views and we should have a param for widget type (i.e. seekbar, toggle, default) for a command instead of assuming parameters with Hints.

 

18 minutes ago, rwsani99 said:

Thanks Goose66, I really know nothing about the Device Hint Editor either.  I've seen it mentioned in a few posts so I was noting that this is another 'tool' that I thought could see all(?) nodes but none of the Bond nodes appear in this drop down list either.  The Device Hint Editor is accessed through the ISY Portal->Select tool...->Connectivity->Device Hint Editor. 

But yes, my real question is why none of my Bond nodes are visible through the ISY Portal->Select tool...->Connectivity->Aamazon Echo device list, but all my ELK and Climacell nodes are.  I can't even see a use for the Climacell nodes to be in the Amazon Echo device list since they do not have on/off functions.  But the Bond nodes could in theory be sent on/off commands through the Echo interface.  

Thanks

The Nodes should be available,  have you tried restarting the ISY/Polisy?

 

2 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

Here are the Bond node hints:

CEILING_FAN: hint = 0x01020100 # Residential/Controller/Class A Motor Controller
LIGHT: hint = 0x01020900 # Residential/Controller/Dimmer
NODID_LIGHT: hint = 0x01021000 # Residential/Controller/Non-Dimming Light
GENERIC: hint = 0x01040200 # Residential/Relay/On/Off Power Switch
FIREPLACE: # (same as generic)
SHADE: hint = 0x01040500 # Residential/Relay/Open/Close

If @bmercier or whomever is in charge of the Alexa interface wants to comment, let me know and I can change the hints to support this functionality.

If they are set then I think the issue is portal is not seeing the nodes,  let's see if a reboot corrects the issue.

[rwsani99]

I've just restarted my ISY/Polisy (twice) along with stopping and restarting the Bond node server and all my Bond nodes are visible and controllable through the ISY/Polisy Admin Console.  But I still can't see these Bond nodes in the Portal's Amazon Echo device list nor the Device Hint Editor's device list.  

Can anyone else who's running the Bond node server see their nodes in the Device Hint Editor list?  Or in the Amazon Echo device list?

Thanks

 

[bmercier]

Note taken.

Will add support for this in the next few days.

[Goose66]

Just an additional note, my Bond nodes, including a ceiling fan, light, fireplace, and shade all show up in both the Amazon Alexa Connectivity and the Hint Editor. Of course, my nodes are coming from the PG2 Node server and not PG3 Node server.

[bmercier]

I looked at the code, and nodes with these hints should be available for Alexa and Google Home. I just saw @Goose66's comment which confirms this.

So, it must be that the nodes don't actually have these hints. 

You may try the hint editor to manually set it.

[rwsani99]

2 hours ago, bmercier said:

You may try the hint editor to manually set it.

The nodes are not visible to the hint editor, at least not when using the PG3 version of the Bond node server.

[Goose66]

@bmercier Can you confirm exactly what "hint" values the Alexa and Google Home values are expecting? Are they long integers, e.g., "hint = 0x01020100" or arrays (lists) of 4 16-bit values, e.g., "hint = [0x01, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00]." It appears that the folks over on the Slack channel are not convinced these are even used anywhere.

[bmercier]

54 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

@bmercier Can you confirm exactly what "hint" values the Alexa and Google Home values are expecting? Are they long integers, e.g., "hint = 0x01020100" or arrays (lists) of 4 16-bit values, e.g., "hint = [0x01, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00]." It appears that the folks over on the Slack channel are not convinced these are even used anywhere.

Hints should be in the form of a long integer, such as 0x01020100

Could you post the result of /rest/nodes/<address> for such a node? This is what ISY Portal looks at.

 

[Goose66]

On 6/23/2022 at 9:52 PM, bmercier said:

Hints should be in the form of a long integer, such as 0x01020100

Could you post the result of /rest/nodes/<address> for such a node? This is what ISY Portal looks at.

Thanks for the info. All my development stuff (PG3/IoP) is all packed up for the move. My production stuff is PG2, so don't know that will help. Hopefully late July I can get back to this.

[rwsani99]

Thanks, I’m currently using the Bond Skill within the Alexa app for spoken commands and otherwise the PG3 Bond node server is working well for me for other ISY Polisy programs.