Hi, I am having a lot of issues with my UPB devices, or more specifically keeping them synchronised between UPB world and HA.
The setup has 4 ‘dimmer’ units and about 6 switch blocks - some 2 button and some 4 button. These switches have Led indicators in them so, simplistically, the Led is on when the light is on.
These are setup at the UPB level using links/scenes and they have been working for years.
It did have limited Automation via an Omni controller but as that is dying I am swapping it to HA.
The hard part of the changs over to HA has been to keep the dashboard indication in line with the actual light.
Seeing its currenlty based on links/scenes that is the obvious way to go; except you cant put a ‘scene’ on a dashboard (well you can but it just says ‘activate’, no indication of the current state and no ‘de-activate’)
I could just use the ‘Dimmer’ as a Light but then you end up with a horrible mess with the Leds in the switches - after years of use we have got used to ‘see led on = thats the button to push to turn light off’.
Well it gets to be a mess if, say, you turned it on via the physical switch but OFF via an automation.
I am sure you can get the picture. These are mostly solved with a template Light in HA whose actions are to activate or deactivate the relevant link.
Coupled with some fancy timing to catch the returned ‘scene-changed’ event.
Now I think have tracked the residual problems to some UPB devices not being known in HA and they log ‘timeout’ at boot time.
2024-08-19 09:37:57.486 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Alfresco 4 button switch' (5_106_0)
2024-08-19 09:38:39.844 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Family Dimmer' (5_3_0)
2024-08-19 09:38:59.956 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Rear2 2 button switch' (5_105_0)
2024-08-19 09:53:10.243 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Alfresco 4 button switch' (5_106_0)
2024-08-19 09:53:20.245 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'TV Room 4 button switch' (5_104_0)
2024-08-19 09:53:32.172 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Family Dimmer' (5_3_0)
2024-08-19 09:53:42.176 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Rear2 2 button switch' (5_105_0)
2024-08-19 11:07:54.652 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Alfresco 4 button switch' (5_106_0)
2024-08-19 11:08:04.654 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'TV Room 4 button switch' (5_104_0)
2024-08-19 11:08:16.508 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Family Dimmer' (5_3_0)
2024-08-19 11:08:26.513 WARNING (MainThread) [upb_lib.upb] Timeout communicating with UPB device 'Rear2 2 button switch' (5_105_0)
Thats just 3 reboots this morning whilst I have been observing. Its rarely the same set although ‘TV Room 4 button switch’ regularly appears.
So the questions / discussion
- How can I see the state of all these devices. ie Whether they are ‘in-the-loop’ at this time or not?
- Can devices come back online? (p.s I have just turned on ‘Enable Polling for Updates’ but I dont know whether is even related)
- Why are the ‘switches’ imported at all? They are not supported by the integration and you cant do anything with them.
- How are the UPB communications handled - I know thats a hard question and I dont know the protocol.
Re 3. If the integration just caught every message to the Network-id then would it even need to know about the switches?
As it stands if one of the switches did not connect at boot then any message sent by that device is ignored by the integration - the switch still works perfectly at the powerline level
How are links/scenes ‘sent’? As a broadcast or does the interface know the formula and send individual commands to each device?
Either way, could it not just dump the command(s) and anything awake can catch them? By observation I think it is working in that broadcast way (Actions starting in HA cause the Led indicators to change in a switch that is otherwise off-line)
Please Enlighten Me
Thanks
JC