Determining Battery Level Programmatically

[jkvossen]

from my understanding, with the release of the upcoming Connect Bridge and the new Lutron app, a user will be able to view the power/battery level that remains for a shade (or at least when the battery level is getting low). I'm guessing this value is obtained via polling or probably the shade is sending out an "alert". Is there any way at all to get that value (either through a poll or monitoring for an alert) so that it can be displayed on a UI? Is this an "undocumented" addition of the protocol? I typically program a shade interface on a third-party graphical touch panel and it would be real handy if I can provide an indication to my customers on their touch panels that the batteries for a particular shade is needing some attention.

thanks

[tabraham]

I would second that request! Having battery-operated shades in difficult to reach areas makes knowing the remaining battery levels especially valuable.

from my understanding, with the release of the upcoming Connect Bridge and the new Lutron app, a user will be able to view the power/battery level that remains for a shade (or at least when the battery level is getting low). I'm guessing this value is obtained via polling or probably the shade is sending out an "alert". Is there any way at all to get that value (either through a poll or monitoring for an alert) so that it can be displayed on a UI? Is this an "undocumented" addition of the protocol? I typically program a shade interface on a third-party graphical touch panel and it would be real handy if I can provide an indication to my customers on their touch panels that the batteries for a particular shade is needing some attention.

thanks

[Mike S.]

Currently the Connect app will only notify you when a device has a low battery. It will not show the current battery level. I have sent your feedback to out App Development team so they can look in to adding this as a future feature.

[jkvossen]

Mike...the connect app must get that information from somewhere; I'm guessing the shade is sending out an alert (of some sort) that the connect app is able to receive and process; which begs the general question on what happens to that "alert" if it is sent and the app isn't running, does the shade continue to send until the batteries are changed? It would be great if a QS processor (and for that matter, a RA2 main repeater) can also receive and process that "alert" such that the integration protocol can report that as a monitor(ed) event...bonus points will be awarded if the Crestron shade modules are modified to have a digital output that is asserted when this condition is noted :)

thanks