[External] Per-page duration??

[Mrredstone5230]

From https://community.home-assistant.io/t/version-1-7-2-is-online-divoom-pixoo-64-integration/636885/29

The project is fantastic!
If you accept a suggestion, I would like to give one which is the possibility of adding the transition interval for each page independently informed on the page itself and no longer a default value for all pages!

[Mrredstone5230]

I think this is a very good suggestion, but to do it, I think it would be interesting to redo the page-rotation loop. Currently, it's something that's called every X seconds, regardless if the service was called or not.

I would love to change that, but with asyncio I'm not sure how to best implement it. I'd like to add a thread that's cancellable(because of the service) that would "sleep" for X amount of time (depending on the page's duration) before calling the next_page function. But again, I'm not sure how to best implement this in Python, mostly when asyncio exists.

[gickowtf]

I think it's a really good idea, but as you say, it's not easy to implement.

[dadiggi]

Just off the top of my head as I didn't try it out, but for the moment, would it be possible to mimic something like this using automation and several consecutive actions (pages) with service calls (send_message), using any of the loop functions in HA (ie. while: some_condition(s) sequence: service_calls)?

[Mrredstone5230]

Huh, I never really thought of that.. but yeah, theoretically, if you made an automation that at the end calls itself, it could maybe work.. I'm going to try it out this evening, because this could change the integration quite a lot...

[gickowtf]

If I have understood this correctly, it should be possible without any problems... off the top of my head I would solve it so that the trigger is released with a helper when the trigger is released. i hope my bad english describes my thoughts

[dadiggi]

@Mrredstone5230 You could call automation itself, but you could also call it once (ie. at some specific time) and it can stay in that automation until loop condition is true. When it's false (state changes or again at some specific time in a day), you're getting out for automation.
Basically, you wouldn't need configuration anymore (or at least some minimum) as you would handle everything around pages through automation/scripts. This would for sure open up a lot of possibilities! 😄

@gickowtf I'm also not a native english speaker, so no worries 😉 But you understood it correctly.

[dadiggi]

I did some testing and it's possible to achieve this via automation.
I have removed config data (left only empty page).
I had to add time delay in configuration after each action (service call) matched with the Divoom duration of the notification.
When automation is finished, it'll stay on the last page until "scan interval" timer is reached after which it'll switch back to the page set in integration config. So for example, if scan interval is set to 30 seconds and total time spent in automation is 20 seconds, it'll stay on last page for 10 seconds after which it'll switch back to the page set in UI config (black screen in my case).

[Mrredstone5230]

Well, I really like this approach. You see, my idea for the "enabled" tag came straight from automations themselves, and I even thought of implementing the "variables" tag for the integration. But I never actually thought it could fully be implemented automations.

Here's a reimplementation I made with the "current logic" we use:

alias: New Automation
mode: restart
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: homeassistant
    event: start
    enabled: true
condition: []
action:
  - repeat:
      while:
        - condition: template
          value_template: "{{true}}"
      sequence:
        - service: divoom_pixoo.show_message
          metadata: {}
          data:
            page_data:
              page_type: components
              components:
                - type: text
                  content: 1
                  position:
                    - 0
                    - 0
                  font: pico_8
                  color: white
          target:
            device_id: b90993533d7a83d58f252c3b58e171e0
        - delay:
            hours: 0
            minutes: 0
            seconds: 5
            milliseconds: 0
        - service: divoom_pixoo.show_message
          metadata: {}
          data:
            page_data:
              page_type: components
              components:
                - type: text
                  content: 2
                  position:
                    - 0
                    - 0
                  font: pico_8
                  color: red
          target:
            device_id: b90993533d7a83d58f252c3b58e171e0
        - delay:
            hours: 0
            minutes: 0
            seconds: 5
            milliseconds: 0

Surprisingly, I really really like it. It made me think that maybe it could be possible to only support this method... This would allow the users to have more control on their own device, which is perfect! Also, this could clean up A LOT the current code we have (The sensor entity could be completely removed!) (Sure, services would have to be moved somewhere else, but that's doable !). (So just to be clear, I would be thinking of removing the "List of pages" in the config completely)

I'm not sure what you think about this @gickowtf, but I think this would be a way better HA friendly implementation altogether. The logic would be handled by HA/The users, and really the only thing that would be lost is the easy notification system. (I've also seen multiple users that don't actually want to use the current "list of pages" system.)

I'm not 100% certain with my idea, since this is a very big shift for the integration if actually implemented, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts about this.

[Mrredstone5230]

On second thoughts, easy notifications are actually possible. If the main "rotating page" logic was in a script instead of an automation (which makes a bit more sense), the automations that will want a notification can call the script.turn_off for the main logic script (that will stop the "main loop"), then display what they want, and after start the script again. Sure, this will mess up the order of the main script's pages, but I doubt that's really important...

[dadiggi]

And that's actually how I've implemented "pausing" and "resuming" automation 😃
One question though, performance wise... is there any difference in using a service call to push each page from automation against old way through config? I guess logic behind it is the same for both (ie. number of rest api calls depends on number of pages, therefore it shouldn't matter what approach is used)?

[Mrredstone5230]

Altogether, I'm sure using automations is more costly than with the current normal approach, but integration-wise, no, there's no real difference between the service and the config (except of course for the page changing logic stuff).

(The page rendering and sending code is the same for both the service and the config)

[gickowtf]

i think the idea is basically good. i just promised the users in version 1.7.0 that it was the last change to the config "this was definitely the last change to the configuration structure!" so i have to say we can run on two tracks the configuration option remains but the service method can be used in the same way. especially with regard to less experienced users i would like to keep the simple config method. Don't get me wrong but I'm happy with the way it is. your PR #48 now fixes the fact that I can leave the config empty and therefore also use the service method.

[steamEngineer]

As a user, I truly don't mind the config changes given the rapid improvements being made to the integration! The user base likely feels the same way, I would think the majority of the HA + hac w/ custom git repo user base is a huge fan of customization, if you force us to change configs due to new customization tools... We probably would be happy to rewrite our automations to factor in the config and make full use of it.

IMO anything on HACS is fair game for rapid development with breaking changes.

Either way, I would recommend doing whatever is easiest for you. :)

Thank you so so much for making this integration! If you add a "buy me a coffee" type button to the git page I'd love to throw you some caffeinated love!