Understanding the rbe node

General
1

I've programmed a flow for turning on and off the TV using node-red-contrib-bravia. Since those nodes don't return a status change and this is a device that often is switched from it's remote, I implemented an automated check every minute. I don't like filling the network bandwith with pollings, but I didn't found any other way.

So every minute, an api call with a request for status is sent. As I don't want to needlessly refresh the dashboard and other interfaces every minute, i've put an rbe node at this output.
But the rbe doesn't pass any message, and as simple as it seems, I can see what's wrong.

So starting from TV off, status off been sent trough the rbe node, I turn the TV on manually. Afer a minute there's the poll and this message it's injected:

topic = ""
msg.payload.status = "standby" (that was "active" a minute before)

But the rbe output debug node doesnt reply. Do I miss anything? Could be the topic being empty the cause?

2

Well, I've changed the topic of the response to "anything" and the rbe node has started to work.
Could this be considered a bug?

3

What mode did you use for the RBE ?

4

"block unless value changes"

5

i also did not find it work...
or did not understand its purpose for "block unless value changes"

6

Upon deploy of your flow, should it ignore the initial value ?

@aihysp - this node is used to block/let through of repeating messages based on the same values or values that are within a certain range (% based)

If you have a flow that constantly produces the same payload, it might not be interesting to have it pass through your flow, but only when the value changes.

7

Nope, it's supposed to take the initial into account.

8

This should work

[{"id":"7675e5e3.c1bc94","type":"rbe","z":"59a8c815.6fe698","name":"","func":"rbe","gap":"","start":"","inout":"out","property":"payload","x":554,"y":308,"wires":[["9cbeb2d.698afd"]]},{"id":"9cbeb2d.698afd","type":"debug","z":"59a8c815.6fe698","name":"","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"true","targetType":"full","x":750,"y":308,"wires":[]},{"id":"a8c4c039.cbc998","type":"inject","z":"59a8c815.6fe698","name":"","topic":"","payload":"{\"status\":\"standby\"}","payloadType":"json","repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"onceDelay":0.1,"x":342,"y":364,"wires":[["7675e5e3.c1bc94"]]},{"id":"e03f0837.335978","type":"inject","z":"59a8c815.6fe698","name":"","topic":"","payload":"{\"status\":\"active\"}","payloadType":"json","repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"onceDelay":0.1,"x":342,"y":280,"wires":[["7675e5e3.c1bc94"]]}]

If it doesn't, which version of node-red, nodejs and npm do you use ?