more rules

[zmechu]

Hello!

Tasmota has 3 rules available. Of course rules can be multi-line and it can be put more commands into one rule, but is there a way to change number of rules? For example 10, or add sth like #MORE_RULES_COMPILE_OPTION 10?

[sfromis]

Actually not only 3 rules. Tasmota has 3 rule sets available, but each of those can contain many rules (on...endon). With 3 buffers of ½ KB available, and compression kicking in, you can generally have over 3 KB of rule text.

[zmechu]

I do such, using Notepad and copy+paste. But it is still really hard to cover many on..endon code lines.

I hope there is way to increase number of rules. Tasmota is so powerful, that adding 0,5kB of code will be piece a cake :)

[sfromis]

Is it hard to cover many lines in notepad, and do one single copy/paste? Not one copy/paste per rule in the set, but one multiline copy/paste for the whole set?

[sfromis]

Useless example, having 3 lines

rule1
on Event#a do var1 a endon
on Event#b do var1 b endon

becomes one line when pasted into the console command field:
rule1 on Event#a do var1 a endon on Event#b do var1 b endon

[zmechu]

My idea is such: 3 rules are fine, but more rules will be more convenient. Of course I can put and combine many of sets into one rule - using notepad, using copy-paste, managing many sets into one etc, etc, etc.

But in my opinion it will be nice option to have possibility to use many small rules in a place of three huge. I have three sensors - it will be more easy to use one rule per sensor than put one set into 0.5kB command.

For example, now I have:

Rule1 ON BH1750#Illuminance>%var1% DO Backlog...
Rule1 + ON BH1750#Illuminance<%var2% DO Backlog...
rule1 + ON tele-SHT3X#Temperature DO DisplayText...
rule1 + ON tele-SHT3X#DewPoint DO DisplayText
rule1 + ON Time DO...
rule1 + ON System#Boot DO...
rule1 + ON Switch2#State DO...

and so on. It works, but there is mixed sets of many sensors, timer, system and it is only first rule :-)
It could be more easy to manage rules using:

Rule1 ON BH1750#Illuminance>%var1% DO Backlog...
Rule1 + ON BH1750#Illuminance<%var2% DO Backlog...

rule2 ON tele-SHT3X#Temperature DO DisplayText...
rule2 + ON tele-SHT3X#DewPoint DO DisplayText

rule3 ON Time DO...

rule4 ON System#Boot DO...

rule5 ON Switch2#State DO...

so, one rule for one sensor, second rule for second sensor, third rule fir timer, fourth for system, fifth for switches, sixth rule to to rule them all ;-)

My idea is to add functionality to manage/use/view rules more easy.

[sfromis]

I do not see much management difficulty... You could just order the rules the way you like, including blank lines. And that Rule1 + is a laborious way - it is much simpler without all those +, like I posted: One, just one copy/paste taking multiple lines. You are making it much harder than what I posted, needing multiple copy/paste.

Anyway, expansion not going to happen. For more involved needs, ESP32 and Berry much recommended over rules.

[Jason2866]

Thank you for sharing your idea. It will not implemented since it is not a small code change and it will result in a bigger firmware size. There are good alternatives to solve how to structure rules.

[zmechu]

I mean - 3 rules "built-in" are fine. Mabybe #MORE_RULES not included in precompiled binaries, but possibility to define more with "every rule add 50kB in firmware". If firmware filesize and number of rules are fine that great, if want more be warned :-)

As alternatives - do you mean Scripting (https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Scripting-Language/)?

[sfromis]

Scripting can be used instead of rules, but that's not about "how to structure rules".

I already explained how easy that is, instead of your very laborious way with many commands and using + to concatenate line by line. Did you understand the point of what I explained? You just seemed to ignore it?

And barbudor also explained how TDM makes editing easier than the Tasmota console.

[zmechu]

I got it, im using "+" just for manage rules in logic way.

TDM means Tasmota Device Manager?

[sfromis]

Well, that + makes it much more laborious to manage, and you asked for making it easier to manage. One single copy/paste can do it for a whole rule set, nicely formatted on multiple lines in the editor.

Yes, TDM is Tasmota Device Manager.

[barbudor]

TDM allows to edit multi-line rules easily

[AleXSR700]

I saw that Jason does not want to increase the number of rules or add a compile option, but I would like to make another case for more rule sets.
Yes, it is possible to have multiple rules in one rule set and this allows for a lot of different scenarios.

But, there are also a lot of cases where you need one rule set per option.
Mainly when you want to work with thresholds and want to prevent the rule from triggering over and over.
Since there is no AND / OR condition available by default, additional rule sets would use up less firmware space and it would be possible to limit the length of the rules based on the number of rules.

So if, e.g. the sum of characters for 3 rules was now limited to e.g. 500 due to storage space, then when you use 5 rule sets each rule set could have 100 characters. If you use 10 rule sets, each would only have 50 characters available.

So it would be pretty cool to be able to use more rule sets with smaller rules.

Just my 2 cents in case anybody wants to implement something like this :)

P.S.: the space needed to make simple tasks happen within on rule set by using variables will be larger than the space needed using multiple rule sets. Because sometimes you have to get really creative to get around the rule set limit and that takes a lot of extra chars.

[sfromis]

It does not make sense to talk about IF/ELSE/ENDIF separately, it cannot even exist outside of already having rules included. What I said was that it does not use parts of the code of rules. You appear to think of IF/ELSE/ENDIF as some sort of thing "instead of rules". It is not, but additional features for rules.

You could argue that it ises all of rules, but still not logical to talk about IF/ELSE/ENDIF "using" rules code at all, when it is instead rules using the IF/ELSE/ENDIF feature.

[AleXSR700]

Okay, what I meant with using parts of the code is that it relies on the code or rules to exist, i.e. it is an extension of the code rather than a standalone feature.

I have run into character limits for my Shelly 3EM rules after switching it from if/elseif. So if it is possible to adjust the limitations of rules, it would really be nice to have a total size rather than individual allocations.
That way you could have rule sets that belong together but are large and rule sets that cannot be combined but are small.

[AleXSR700]

So, I have been compiling my firmwares now and can OTA update them locally.

But I am still running into the issue of 511 chars per rule set and hence a total of 1533 chars for all 3 rule sets.

Is there an alternative?
I see that the UFS that would allow me to use autoexec.bat needs at least 2 MB. Although I am not sure if it really needs 2 or if the minimum setting for the UFS is just 1 MB (so if I could somehow build an image with less than 1 MB UFS.
Something like board = esp8266_1M0.1M aka 1 MB flash with 0.1 MB UFS.

@barbudor , you mentioned a rules.dat. I would not mind having all rules in one big file if that would be a workaround.
Right now my firmware 643 KB with 360 KB free. So that should easily be enough for a rules.dat if the firmware can somehow support reading such a file.

[sfromis]

With compression, the 511 chars per rule can hold way more, typically well above 1 KB.

The alternative is to use ESP32 and Berry. Or cut down on your micro-management tendencies.

[AleXSR700]

Cannot use Berry on all my esp8266 devices.
And I don't consider it micro management because it saves me from my database exploding.

I will see if compression solves it. Makes it a bit more tricky because for hat to work you need to create the rule in steps, i.e.

rule1 blah blah
rule1 +more blah blah

because you cannot just add e.g. 1500 chars in one go.

So setting the rules via mqtt needs to be adjusted into multi liners.

[barbudor]

@AleXSR700 You may want to try that PR19348 by pulling my branch https://github.com/barbudor/Tasmota/tree/extended_rules

It requires filesystem to save the additional rules so it is not officially supported on 1MB devices.

However I have test version that you can try at your own risks:
Build with the following environment by adding the 2 attached files in Tasmota/boards/

[env:tasmota-rulesext1m]
build_flags             = ${env.build_flags} -DUSE_RULES_EXTENDED
board                   = esp8266_1M32

I'm not sure how safe it is. The filesystem may get corrupted during OTA with a large file

Don't forget that to move from a build without filesystem to a build with filesystem, you need to fully erase and serial-reflash the device (don't forget to save the configuration before)

esp8266_1M32.zip

Note that there is no guarantee that Theo will accept that PR

[AleXSR700]

Thank you @barbudor , that looks really interesting 👏

Why is filesystem needed? It reads as if only a few more bytes are needed. Why can't the rules be saved in the free 360 kB of a 1 MB system?

[barbudor]

5 additional rules of 512 bytes each
Do the math, that's 2560 bytes
There's no way to store that anywhere else than in file system as we won't reorganize the map of Tasmota

[AleXSR700]

I did, but am I then misreading the information?

Flash Size 1024 KB
Program Flash Size 1024 KB
Program Size 643 KB
Free Program Space 360 KB
Free Memory 24.6 KB

And that info is from a build with If/Else enabled. So additional ~3 kB should fit, should it not?

[sfromis]

No. The settings data structure is 4KB fixed, with many different things, not just rule sets. Expanded number of rule sets needs to be stored somewhere, not just assuming that "free space" is available that way, as mechanisms need to exist for reserving space. Using a file system is a good way of having persistent space for such.

[jgoldwein]

this is how rule1 appears on the tasmota console. How do I get rid of all of the extraneous white space?

15:20:53.532 CMD: rule1
15:20:53.541 MQT: merion/kitchen/coffeemaker/stat/tasmota_9E2681/RESULT = {"Rule1":{"State":"ON","Once":"OFF","StopOnError":"OFF","Length":322,"Free":189,"Rules":"on System#boot do backlog power1 0;power2 1;power3 1;var4 full;buzzer 1,1,1;rule2 1;rule3 1;delay 50 endon on wifi#connected do backlog buzzer 2,1,1;power2 0;power3 0 endon \t\t on button1#State do power1 2 endon \t\t on power1#state=1 do buzzer -1,3,7 endon \t\t on power1#state=0 do buzzer 0 endon"}}

[barbudor]

Retype it

[sfromis]

You using tabs may look like a lot of white space, but that's likely just how it is presented. I'd still prefer to avoid tabs, as they are not relevant to Tasmota.