Nomad 1.3 Release
Applies to: Nomad Release Track: Stable Version: 1.3 Requires action: No
Summary
Routines, the behaviours you build yourself: what starts it, what else has to be true, and what happens. A Zigbee button you can give a job to. Your Teltonika router and switch now update from Sensa, each with its own automatic updates switch. Scenes now set an LED strip's animation as well as its colour. And when Zigbee stops, the van tells you rather than going quiet.
Routines
The Routines tab has carried a short note in place of the feature since the beginning. It is now the feature.
Where an instinct is a protective behaviour Sensa builds and looks after for you, a routine is yours: something you put together out of what your van can already do, so it happens without you thinking about it.
Each routine is a tile showing its name, what starts it, and how many extra conditions it checks. The switch on the tile stands a routine down for a trip and brings it back later without opening it, and Add a routine sits at the end of the tiles.
The editor asks three questions. When is what starts it: a time of day, something in the van changing, who is aboard, sunset rather than a clock time that is wrong half the year, or the van raising an alarm. And If is what else has to be true at that moment, and leaving it empty is perfectly normal. Then Do is what happens. "When the door opens, and if it is dark" runs on the door, not on the dark.
You choose things by working inwards, through the same categories you see everywhere else, rather than down one long list. On a van with plenty of kit a search box sits at the top and looks across all of it at once, so you can type part of a name and pick it straight from the results.
Every routine writes a line to the Log when it fires, and the line links back to the routine, ready for you to adjust it.
A button you can give a job to
The SONOFF Zigbee Scene Button is now found and paired like anything else. It switches nothing and reads nothing, so it gets no card of its own: the point of owning one is to bind a press to something, which is exactly what a routine does.
Pair it, then build a routine with When, Device, and pick the button. Its presses are offered by name, reading Button 1 · single press, Button 2 · double press and so on, so every button and every kind of press can do something different.
Your router and your switch update from Sensa
Last release brought the Victron Cerbo GX in. A Teltonika router and a Teltonika managed switch now join it, so three pieces of equipment that are not ours can be kept current from the van rather than from their own apps.
Each is offered the way a Sensa update is: the version it is on, the version waiting for it, and a button. Routers are given the stable stream rather than the newest build, because Teltonika promote a build to stable only after several weeks without a serious fault being found in it, and a van's router is not the place to be first. A router update is also refused while a remote support session is open, since the reboot would cut the engineer off halfway through the job. It goes in once the session ends.
All three have their own Automatic updates switch in Settings, and all three start switched on, so a van left alone keeps its equipment current. Turn one off and that piece of equipment is paused rather than hidden: you are still told when a new version is waiting, and the Update button still works, so you can take it at a moment that suits you.
Managed switches are offered updates by the same route as the routers, but we have not yet had one on our own bench. If yours reports nothing available, or an update will not start, that is the reason, and nothing is harmed by it. If you would rather wait, leave that switch's automatic updates off until we say otherwise.
Scenes set an LED strip's animation
A scene already brought back a strip's colour and brightness. It now carries its Effect as well, so a scene can start one of the controller's animations, or hold a plain colour with None.
What a scene does not offer is the wiring. The pixel count, the chip type and the bead sequence stay under Settings, Devices, where you set them once when the strip goes in. They describe how the strip is built rather than how you want it to look, so a scene has no business changing them.
When Zigbee stops, you are told
If the part of the system that talks to your Zigbee coordinator stops, everything Zigbee goes quiet at once: lights, sensors and buttons alike, rather than one thing dropping out. Nothing is lost and nothing needs pairing again, because your devices are paired to the coordinator itself, not to that piece of software.
Most interruptions now clear themselves. A coordinator that loses its network connection for a moment is retried and picked back up without you noticing. If it stays down, a message appears in the Settings Log saying Zigbee has stopped, rather than leaving you to work it out. Pressing Pair Zigbee while it is down now tells you the service is not running, instead of appearing to work while nothing joins.
This release also repairs the one setting that could leave the service refusing to start at all after a coordinator had been swapped.