Help Hubitat users recognize when sensor readings are unavailable

[ckamps]

Help Hubitat users recognize when sensor readings are unavailable so that users can code rules to handle these situations.

Examples

For example, when temperature and humidity sensors are used in support of managing HVAC systems, users don't want their rules to be processed against outdated and potentially inaccurate data.

One of the users of this set of drivers forked the temperature driver and added code to set an artificially high temperature so that his boiler would be turned off in the event that either the HA7Net as a whole is not responding or there is an issue with a specific sensors.

Analysis

Since the general scenario isn't unique to HA7Net integration, we should research how other Hubitat drivers and best rules development best practices address this scenario.

For example, the HA7Net drivers currently set a lastUpdated attribute that can be used by rules to take into account the age of the sensor information. If the age is sufficiently old, a rule may opt to take a safe path given the lack of up-to-date information.