Idea: Native support for groups

[AlCalzone]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Z-Wave JS supports multicast and broadcast, but there is currently no way to use this feature through the UI, without resorting to driver functions. It would be great to expose virtual nodes that represent multiple devices internally

Describe the solution you'd like

• A group manager that allows creating virtual nodes / groups of nodes. It should be possible to create/edit/delete groups, and for each group add/remove devices
• Additional rows in the nodes table with those groups. Show values for them like for normal devices.
• Maybe an additional row for the broadcast node

Additional context
getDefinedValueIDs, setValue, getCCVersion etc. is implemented for virtual nodes already.

The only challenge is updating values of those virtual nodes. I think it would work if those get updated any time the actual value of any underlying node changes. If all the values for a given value ID of every single underlying node is the same, the virtual value is that value. If not, the virtual value is undefined/null.

[robertsLando]

@AlCalzone does zwave-js has support for the crud of this groups or the groups entity is something that will only exist on z-ui?

[AlCalzone]

The "thing" will only exist in Z-UI. You can use getMulticastGroup, getBroadcastNode, getBroadcastNodeLR to get a VirtualNode - essentially a temporary wrapper around Z-Wave JS's APIs. It's not more than that.

Z-Wave JS does not update virtual nodes or endpoints, nor does it store them.

[robertsLando]

Ok so (instructions for copilot to draft a PR):

Backend side

• Add support to create/delete/update nodes groups. This groups will have a name and a list of nodeIds that are part of this groups and will be stored on a new file named groups.json in store dir. Give to each group an incremental numeric id above 0xfff that is the LR broadcast node. To get the next id just take the max one and add 1
• Foreach group we should use getMulticastGroup API to get a virtual node of the group and we have to add that node to our nodes list.
• Do the same for broadcast node, use API getBroadcastNode to retrieve the virtual node and return it to frontend
• Use NODE_ID_BROADCAST and NODE_ID_BROADCAST_LR to identify broadcast nodes
• Add a way to distinguish normal nodes from multicast/broadcast ones (use a dedicated property virtual: "true|false", true for broadcast and multicast nodes)
• updating values of those virtual nodes: those get updated any time the actual value of any underlying node changes. If all the values for a given value ID of every single underlying node is the same, the virtual value is that value. If not, the virtual value is undefined/null.
• Add groups.json to backuped files

Frontend side

• Add a new left menu entry 'Groups'. This view should show a table like other views with buttons to create/delete/update groups and export the groups.json using the new apis created on backend
• On control panel table/smart view add a way to identify and distinguish multicast/broadcas virtual nodes from others and allow to filter them from the table/smart view (use the virtual prop to do this)
• virtual nodes should have all columns in table empty, only the group name should be shown under name column, nothing else.
• In expanded node, when the node is virtual:
  • show only node and debug info tabs
  • hide help groups and ota updates.
  • hide device id and link to configuration db
  • hide statistics,ping and advanced buttons
  • hide refresh/reset buttons on command classes groups expand.

[robertsLando]

I'm not sure how copilot parses issues so I created a new one, #4381