Integrating Measure V2 into the integration

[stefangries]

I just had another idea that could simplify the measurement. I'll present it briefly, so we can discuss it :-)

The measure script is written in Python - just like the integration itself. So why isn't the measure script simply part of the integration? Integrations can provide services in Home Assistant. And paramaters can also be passed to this service, such as the entity of the light to be measured, the entity of the measure plug, etc. This way, everyone could use the measure script without having to install it somewhere separately. In addition, you would not have to leave your PC switched on for days, as the Home Assistant instance runs 24/7 anyway.

What do you think?

[ballerblockin]

Great idea. I would love that. I never got the measurement to work when trying yesterday. Some error in creating Model JSON. It never asked me any questions. Then again. I only looked at it for a few minutes.

[bramstroker]

@stefangries

This approach has some drawbacks, which in the end will not make things easier. Also it is a significant development effort.

• Call service is not really meant for long running jobs (which run for hours or days), and we cannot easily display progress / output etc.
• No questions can be asked or selections can be presented (which makes things more complicated for a user). Need to pass in all params with some yaml structure and we need to do a lot of validation etc.
• More dependencies have to be added to the custom component, which also need a commit in wheels repository from home assistant. I don't want to do this everytime.

Besides the drawbacks mentioned above there are a lot of other questions and things I cannot forsee yet.
Anyway this change is really a no go for me, and I want to keep the measure tooling a separate utility next to the component. This way we don't pollute the component and also makes things lot easier to maintain for me.

I am working on a docker image though to make things even easier then they are right now. You need to have docker engine running on your machine (which most tech savy users have anyway), and than it's a oneliner to start the measurements. #221

@ballerblockin Could you please create an issue for the error when you still experience problems, must be something easy in the end I assume.

[stefangries]

I can understand your reservations, especially about the development work and not visible progress.

If you are building a Docker container anyway, I could imagine that it could also be packaged very well in a Home Assistant addon to be able to run it on Home Assistant OS very easily. That might be an attractive way to combine the advantages of both worlds - especially that your own PC doesn't have to run permanently.

What do you think of that? If you find it interesting, I could take care of the addon as soon as you have finished the container.

[bramstroker]

Yes that's definitely a good idea!! best of both worlds.
I will do some further work on the container this weekend. Almost got it working. Only have a problem with volume mapping which causes the Hue user not being persisted (so you need to push the button with each run of the container).
Would be great if you can have a look into wrapping it into a addon!

[bramstroker]

@ballerblockin see #247. The script actually broke with a recent pr. Will be fixed soon