Rule machine - as per the app developer, this app is no longer available for new installs, distribution, or support

For me, rules are not functioning at all. I have a temperature sensor to control a frost protection device, and today it is not firing…and of course the android problem means I cannot go in and see why.

I have adopted the precaution of always having multiple controls on anything important, and my virtual thermostat app kicked in as a backup.

Aye, and there’s the rub. :unamused:

hey chick @bravenel has built one hell of an app for us. ST would be next to useless for me without it and the best part HE DOES IT FOR FREE!!! If he gives us something that occasional has a bug here or there you cant complain because he is one man and its not like you are even paying for it. If you figure in how unstable the ST platform itself is I think his Rule Machine is about one of the best things we could ask to have.

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AYFK?! Do you think I don’t know that? And do you really think he’s one man? Do you think I haven’t contributed to the development of the app by finding and helping @bravenel resolve issues with the app? Are you suggesting that the time that I’ve spent doing that is valueless? Do you think that the time that others have put in to debug this is, as well?

I get the whole open source/community development thing. I get that. And I love RM. Really, I do. And I’m quite familiar with agile development. I also believe that, as this functionality becomes more a central part of a more and more people’s implementations of the platform, stability, in addition to new features, becomes a key aspect of its usability/attractiveness. I was simply suggesting that perhaps it’s time for this app to adopt a bit more of a “structured” development model, so that every update doesn’t open us up to a new bugs.

Yep! Must be that new math! :smile:

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Is anyone getting the red banner when attempting to open a rule? Seems like the Rule is the only app…(update: Smart Lighting suffers from the same red banner disease)

I see that it’s been going on for a few hours:

From Platform Status:

Update - Issues loading Smart Home Monitor on Android should be resolved. However, some Android users are experiencing problems configuring certain SmartApps. We are investigating and will continue to provide updates.

Nice.

At least the all mighty cloud is not biased ‘certain apps’ includes the home grown local processing app!!!

Doesn’t that basically say, “hey, we know it’s broke, but we fixed it, unless it’s still broke”?

To those complaining about needing a more stable development life cycle for RM, stop updating with every single thing he commits. Agile development does not mean CI to prod.

It’s very simple, if what you have is working, and you don’t need a new feature, don’t update.

The allure to keep grabbing the latest is something I can understand. Sure, my stuff works now, but maybe it can work even better. The reality is that although this is technically the master branch, it’s develop. If you treat it like continuous integration (sans any unit tests) you run the risk of breaking things. Why don’t you just hang back and let someone else report that it’s broken?

If you have a problem, then update and re-test it. Presumably one of Bruce’s first questions is going to be the equivalent of “are you running the latest?” If it fails on the latest that’s a helpful data point. Bitching about him breaking random things with each commit is pointless. RM is what makes ST useful. Period. The fact that he does rapid development is absolutely fantastic. For those of us that understand the risk, it’s the price of the game.

Report your issues, add to the discussion and help RM get even better. It’s easy to roll back in github so just pick a point where your important stuff works. Play with the latest, roll back if you need to. The last thing you want is Bruce to bail over whining about his free efforts screwing up your setup. Maintaining a proper master and develop branch setup is overhead for him. It’s just not needed when you can create your own personal master by forking and or not updating.

/rant

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cheers Bruce - seems to work perfectly fine now - what I have found out though - if I commit an upgrade via IDE I needed to run through every single rule and push the configuration on Android for it to work properly in addition to that sometimes it was required to restart my v2 hub before everything was working fine - I have switched to using the IOS app on my ipad since which doesnt seem to need this at all …

another interesting fact that I have seen since the 10d update I get much more notifications within the activity feed - my Fibaro motion sensors report the lux more frequently as well as it seems I get more notifications in general which seems odd to me from every sensor really - I cant remember seeing as many notifications ever before - not sure if its the backend or your update … anyway keep up the good work.

with regards to update cycles - dont fix it if it aint broke - if you dont need a special functionality and everything is working as should - I dont think there is a need to upgrade at all …

Hi Bruce, quick question:

For the ‘set color for these bulbs’ action, is there any way to have a color change maintain the current dimming level of the bulb? I noticed that my Hue lights want to go to full brightness every time a color change happens unless I set a specific dimmer level in the ‘set color’ action.

I have acquired a couple of the Lowes Iris Smart Buttons. They are working within Smartthings. I was going to establish a rule, however I do not have the a “Button” listed under Rule Machine as a capability. When I looked at some of the coding for Rule Machine I can see “Button” listed with all the other capabilities. I can see all the other capabilities, but can’t find the button. Is it just me?

They’re available for Trigger events, not rules.

I see it now! Thanks!!

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Actually, this has only happened once or twice. It’s usually the new feature that has bugs. I did step on Turn On/Off After a Delay a couple of days ago (while doing code cleanup, not adding features), but that is not common.

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This can’t be true. Updating the app on Android should not require you to update all of your Rules. ST doesn’t work that way.

thats what I thought but it did - the rules didnt render correctly - nor did some of the rules fire correctly - I am on a galaxy note here - now since I am using the iPad I havent seen those issues - the iPad seems to pull in data/refresh for 2 seconds to show everything correctly whereas the android app doesnt - maybe that is related … I dont know where the rule templates are stored locally on the device or cloud only so I cant judge the difference in behaviour but I have seen it multiple times - all rules started to work after I have touched them all and then did a final commit to the cloud …

Bruce, I used to run into this problem as well on Android. It wasn’t RM as it went away fur me with one of the Android updates.

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Maybe it’s the note device… I’m using a note 4 and had to do this for a while as well.

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