Re: [mh] Hi Everybody and some Questions

[Gregg L. <gr...@li...>]

Hi Tom,

Quoting Tom Van den Bon (9/28/06 10:14 AM):
>> ... good to hear you have working listeners now.  Sorry about the early
>> failed start on using the external hub.
>>   
> Not a problem - I'm glad it is working, makes mh seem alot more usefull 
> if you have some hardware bringing in data and events.

agreed.  For the record, the issue was specific to external hubs that I
had not tested against; the (normal) use of the in-built mh xPL hub was
unaffected.

> So if I have some lights in a group called 'outside', I can add the 
> generic items to this group

yep

> - or can I only create a group for certain 
> items?

no such limit exists

> So it will call this method(hook) even if I set the state to the same 
> value again ? I don't think it should be too big a problem. Is there a 
> way that I can find out what the previous state was before the hook 
> method was called ?


#one way is to declare a var outside of the hook that is updated by the
hook:

my $prior_state = '?????????'; # initialize to a state that is invalid
# note, $prior_state's value won't be preserved across reloads
# if this is important, then consider using the $Save hash.

# then, in your "hook" sub:

if ($state ne $prior_state) {
# then, the state has changed

# be sure to update $prior_state
   $prior_state = $state;
}