Zigbee2mqtt: Add an additional source for converter configuration

[danielwelch]

Updating and using zigbee-shepherd-converters as a seperate node module seems to be working pretty nicely, but it causes a problem for add-on users as editing the devices file requires connecting to the add-on's docker container, which is confusing for some people (see discussion here).

I don't want to rock the boat too much just for this use case, but maybe it'd be possible to add an additional file to "check" for configuration of additional devices. If there was, the add-on could expose a .js file in the share directory, which would make it easy for add-on users to add unsupported devices in a way that they're used to.

[danielwelch]

My basic thought process for how this would work is to add a configuration.yaml option localDevices (or whatever) that defines a module path and do something along the lines of:

// some psuedo-code
var zigbeeShepherdConverters = require('zigbee-shepherd-converters');
if (settings.get().localDevices) {
    const localDevices = require(settings.get().localDevices);
    zigbeeShepherdConverters.devices = { ...localDevices, ...zigbeeShepherdConverters.devices };
}

and require the user to implement a module at the path that exports a devices object.

[Koenkk]

Yes, that would be a nice solution, however we also need to import the fromZigbee and toZigbee from that path.

[nic0dk]

+1 here,
do have a few zigbee device i need to add support for and are using Daniel's addon.
BTW awesome project you 2 guys made - Thanks!

[tb-killa]

What about building converter per device as module files.
We provide for every device typ one single file and do some sort of recursive files on folder search on zigbee2mqtt startup and include them.
With this everyone could build own converter and doesn´t have to handle with modified ...

[Koenkk]

Yes that would be nice (that's also how smartthings solves it), but this would require a complete refactor of zigbee-shepherd-converters, maybe one separate file is enough for now?

[danielwelch]

Yes, that would be a nice solution, however we also need to import the fromZigbee and toZigbee from that path.

Can you give me some more detail here? I’m not sure how this would work as the converters aren’t exposed like devices are (or, they’re only exposed as a prop of devices). What if a device defined by a user needs a converter defined in zigbee-shepherd-converters? Or is that not a concern?

I’d like to implement this and open a PR as it seems a lot of issues keep arising from this, and I’d like to help.

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