Homeseer Devices and Events Sync

Questions
#1

Hi guys,

I have noticed that after syncing Homeseer (including events), a number of old events and devices that previously had been deleted in Homeseer continue to appear as available devices in Designer bindings dropdowns. I can also see these when expanding Homeseer in the Explorer and am able to individually delete these as a workaround.

But should the devices previously deleted in HS not disappear when I perform a “Synchronize Devices” for Homeseer?

In addition I have at least 1 device which exists in Homeseer and is operational (z-wave switch), however this does not show up after a sync. For this kind of issue, I could probably unpair the switch, delete the HS device and re-add the device then resync, but I would obviously prefer to not have to do this.

I am looking for guidance/ideas on how to troubleshoot/fix these sync issues.

Thanks in advance,

Dennis

#2

The app will not delete any devices during sync. It will only add new ones. My recommendation would be to select & delete all devices, then do a sync.

#3

That makes sense - thanks.

Any thoughts regarding existing HS devices which do not make it over during the sync process?

Thanks again

Dennis

#4

Copy & paste an existing device & update the Id. The Id is the HomeSeer reference Id.

#5

Hi Bill,

Thanks - I tried deleting all of the Homeseer devices and resynced. This generally worked and removed all of the defunct devices which no longer were on Homeseer, however for some reason all of the device names changed in Designer after the resync.

As an example I have a device in homeseer named “Hallway Lights” which was stored in HS under Floor = “Lighting” and Room = “Hallway”.

When I originally synced, it came over as “HallwayLights”. However after I deleted and resynced, the device came over prefixed with Floor/Room so the new name comes up in the binding dropdowns as:

“LightingHallwayHallwayLights”

This change seems to have taken place with all of the devices in Designer (and I had not made any changes to the device name, Floor or Room in HS). Because of this I had to go through and update all references in the remote layout to point to the new names.

Would you have any idea what caused this change? The only thing I can think of is that the designer software perhaps was updated sometime after I did my original install and sync? If that is the case, great - I agree this is a more user-friendly approach).

But in any case, I would like to understand why this happened so all of the rework can be avoided in the future as changing all of the references needless to say is a tedious task.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Dennis

#6

Hi Bill,

Would you have any idea why Homeseer sync sometimes prefixes the device with Floor and Room and sometimes not?

I played around with a couple of new projects but am unable to reproduce this. In my current live project devices are prefixed (after deleting all devices and resyncing), but when setting up a new project they are not.

Hoping you can help out on this.

Thanks

Dennis

#7

The HomeSeer device naming routine has gotten a little complex over the years. There isn’t a fixed pattern it uses. I didn’t want to automatically do “HomeRemoteName = HSLocation1 + HSLocation2 + HSName” because that can produce some pretty long names. It tries to be as descriptive as possible with the fewest number of characters, if that makes sense. Sometimes it’ll include 1 location name, sometimes it’ll include both, sometimes it doesn’t even include location at all. Don’t be scared to change those names. You are free to change both the Name & DisplayName.

#8

But with 100’s of devices, after resyncing this disabled a bunch of bindings so a lot of manual work resulted.

I know this might be a big ask, but would it not be possible for THR to key off of the device ID e.g. “425” instead of the device name? This would ensure that everything continues to work as expected after a resync. (I am not really concerned about the naming convention, just want to make sure I dont have to make all kinds of name changes after a resync to get things working again).

Thanks

Dennis

#9

That’s exactly why sync doesn’t delete items. I probably shouldn’t have told you earlier to delete & resync.

#10

I guess what I am suggesting is that devices be stored in THR by their device ID and when selected in a binding, it is the device ID which is stored in the hrp and not the name, That way regardless of name changes in the THR device list (whether it is caused by a sync or otherwise) the device binding wont change, only the name in the dropdown).

I suspect this probably will be a big deal to change - if that is the case, I shall “rest my case” :slight_smile:

Thanks

Dennis

#11

There are a few reasons this wasn’t done. Device IDs are only unique to the parent source. It’s possible you could have both a HomeSeer device & Fibaro device with the same Id. And with XAML, bindings are almost always based on the element/object name. Treating device bindings differently wouldn’t follow standard XAML practices. I agree this can be inconvenient. That’s one of the reasons there’s a DisplayName property on each object. DisplayName can be changed without concern of breaking existing bindings.

#12

…and yeah, that would also be a very very big change.