Driver Update Lost Device

@AnotherUser Crystal clear this time thanks. The issue is not repeated after copying the exact existing code into a duplicate “test clone” driver. So this does seem to be a problem with the updated driver and not the Hubitat database.

I’ve been following and trying a few things and haven’t been able to replicate the issue. We could try a process of elimination where I add half of the changes to the driver and see if it breaks it for you. If it does I divide those changes in half and try again. We do this until we figure out the specific section that is causing problems for you.

@EricM_Inovelli, I’ve experienced an unexpected behavior when updating from the driver dated 2020-05-01 to the one dated 2020-05-05. Within the Groups and Scenes app in Hubitat, all of the LZW31-SN Dimmers move from the dimmers category to the bulbs category. You can see this by selecting Create New Group and clicking on the Select bulbs for group and Select dimmers for group drop-down menus.

@rpulivella, with the new driver installed, do your devices now show up under bulbs?

I’ve installed a second dimmer driver using the driver dated 2020-05-01 and gave it a different name. If I change the driver for one of my dimmers to this second driver, the dimmer moves back to the dimmers category.

FYI, my Hubitat Elevation is at the latest version, 2.2.0.128. All of my dimmers have been updated to 1.41 using the method called out here:


Before re-including my updated dimmers, I decided to do a Full Reset on my Hubitat to start with a clean state. Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide to help troubleshoot this problem.

– Mike

1 Like

@rpulivella @NotTheHerbie Can you guys try deleting the line:

capability “ColorControl”

from the top of the driver to see if it resolves your issue?

2 Likes

Will do.

– Mike

@EricM_Inovelli, I commented out the above line and the 8 dimmers I have installed so far now appear in the dimmers category again.

– Mike

Updated: I did have to re-add the devices to the Group, but the Group itself did not disappear, just the devices that were incorrectly listed under bulbs.

1 Like

I believe this may be it! I have not a single smart bulb paired with my Hub at the moment so I never would have had a reason to look in bulbs (nor did I). @NotTheHerbie I think you may have figured out actually what was happening when the devices “vanished.”

@EricM_Inovelli after updating to the 2020-05-05 GitHub driver then commenting out the capability ColorControl line I was able to utilize any device using that driver in apps as would be expected including group/scene/rule creation/edit, custom commands, and all driver features I was able to test.

Update: after reverting back to the real 2020-05-05 driver I can confirm that indeed any devices using that driver did move over to the bulbs list. I made a backup with the commented version of the driver in place so I just did a simple restore back to that working state. I did not have time to test if editing the code again would leave me with working apps and no silent rule corruption.

It is late here on the east coast and I just am getting caught up with these new developments. I am going to leave this modified 2020-05-05 driver in my system for now and will continue testing tomorrow.

@EricM_Inovelli, @NotTheHerbie thank you both so much for moving this forward! Please let me know what/if you would like me to test on my hub next.

– Richard

2 Likes

Glad we figured it out!

Usually apps have overlap between capabilities. For example, our dimmer has a “switch” capability and a “dimmer” capability. It will usually show up as a selectable device in each list. It looks like some Hubitat apps do some kind of filtering to try to make the device only show up once instead of in multiple categories. I’m not sure what kind of code they use to do this because I was able to fool it by changing capabilities back and forth.

For now I am going to comment that line out in Github until I can find a solution for it.

2 Likes

Your guess is exactly correct. Hubitat built-in apps have access to some things that user/custom apps don’t, and I’m guessing (they haven’t really mentioned this specifically…) that some sort of magic here is one of those things, possibly because they have access to at least see all devices from the start without needing to have the user specifically select them from an input. A device will also show in only one list: bulbs, dimmers, or switches. “ColorControl” makes Hubitat think it’s a bulb, and so that’s the only place it will go.

I’m not sure of what any workaround would be for this besides moving “ColorControl” to a separate device, like a child device for the LED bar itself (something I toyed around with in a custom driver), using a custom command instead (losing the ability to manipulate this in standard apps), or holding our breaths hoping they change something to allow this to work differently. :slight_smile:

1 Like

@BertABCD1234 I was thinking of doing a custom command, but not being able to access it from standard apps is kind of a bummer. Probably the child device is the best option. You always have such good ideas LOL. :slight_smile:

Edit: I wish Hubitat devs would just allow you to select the device in any of the capability lists that the device supports.

@EricM_Inovelli ColorControl also broke Hubitat integration with Google Home for newly-added dimmers. The Red dimmer I added today showed as Not Responding until I updated to the driver where you disabled it again. Then, removing and readding the dimmer worked in Google Home again.

Dimmers I previously had added to Google Home were unaffected, so it’s something about Hubitat’s initial advertisement to Google of what features the device supports that was breaking it when ColorControl was present.