Virtual ON/OFF Switches - Good but needs a little work.
kgrr | 08.01.2012 Rating: 
This plug-in creates a virtual device that looks like a real switch but does not have any hardware associated with it. It could be used as an input to select between two modes like home/away or vacant/rented, etc. or it could be used to display that an event happened such as a window sensor or motion sensor tripped, a garage door is open, or there's water under a water heater or on a bathroom floor.
It has blue ON and OFF buttons like light switches and a purely decorative icon that looks like a wall controller. Like a real device, it can be pinned to the dashboard and a wrench symbol that can be used to manage it.
When the virtual device is first installed, it's defaulted to its off position. With a simple mouse click, the device can be turned on and off. It can be included in scenes to be turned on and off along with other devices. These scenes can be controlled with motion detectors, window/door sensors and with my Android phone running the HomeBuddy application. Also, it can send a notification under various pre-programmed conditions.
One curious thing that I ran into is that I can turn it on with a GE/Jasco 45600 remote, but for some reason it does not respond to the corresponding off command. I have yet to figure out what is going on since it does send a notification when I turn it off with the remote.
It would be really nice if the icon could be toggled to give a visual indication like the light bulb turning on and off on hardware switches; for example, it could toggle between green and red so that it could be easily seen pinned to the dashboard.
Another improvement would be if the labels on the switch could be labeled with the text coming from the advanced configuration so that it could say home/away, open/closed, vacant/rented, etc. This would help the dashboard become more like an at-a-glance dashboard.
It's a good start. It just needs a few finishing touches.
Reviewed on a Vera3 with 1.5.255/UI5 firmware.
It has blue ON and OFF buttons like light switches and a purely decorative icon that looks like a wall controller. Like a real device, it can be pinned to the dashboard and a wrench symbol that can be used to manage it.
When the virtual device is first installed, it's defaulted to its off position. With a simple mouse click, the device can be turned on and off. It can be included in scenes to be turned on and off along with other devices. These scenes can be controlled with motion detectors, window/door sensors and with my Android phone running the HomeBuddy application. Also, it can send a notification under various pre-programmed conditions.
One curious thing that I ran into is that I can turn it on with a GE/Jasco 45600 remote, but for some reason it does not respond to the corresponding off command. I have yet to figure out what is going on since it does send a notification when I turn it off with the remote.
It would be really nice if the icon could be toggled to give a visual indication like the light bulb turning on and off on hardware switches; for example, it could toggle between green and red so that it could be easily seen pinned to the dashboard.
Another improvement would be if the labels on the switch could be labeled with the text coming from the advanced configuration so that it could say home/away, open/closed, vacant/rented, etc. This would help the dashboard become more like an at-a-glance dashboard.
It's a good start. It just needs a few finishing touches.
Reviewed on a Vera3 with 1.5.255/UI5 firmware.
