Dynamic view of execution advanced flows

Would it be possible as a new feature, to enable a Dynamic view of execution for advanced flows?
With that I mean that you can actually see, realtime, in what phase a flow is being executed when you open it from the webinterface.
Currently, you can run a flow and see where it gets executed, but this is not applicable when using variables or when a value has changed

No, Emile allready explained this in a AMA: it would go to fast: they have to do it slow so you can see it.
If they would need to slow it down, only when you start watching it, flows will act randomly.
Only alternatief is always slowing flow execution down. But that would not be a nice think.

And in realtime, you wouldnt be able to really “see it happening”, you would just see te responses.

It would be nice to see the lines-of-execution tho (which is almost what you mean i guess :wink:)
But that would require logging in a way that could potentionally crash homey very fast.

Imagen a webrequest for 1 mb file: no issue in memory. But if you need to log it, so you can trace the flow execution back, we would have the original Insights issue: a memory overloaded Homey that fatally crashes.

So, current solution: let users place logs in flows themself :stuck_out_tongue:

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Bumping this suggestion, since I have the same need. To say that it’s not possible is to take the easy way out.

I have been struggling with an advanced flow involving a timer and a power metering plug to get a notification when our dishwasher is ready. I have done several attempts and finally managed to get it to work. How? I have no idea…as far as I know I have done the same thing in all attempts and it just started to work. If I had been able to see the flow in real time it would have been easy to see where the flow ran into problem.

Before Homey I used the Telldus system. When I did the same programming for notification of the “dishwasher ready” in their version of flows I could see the different parameters in the flow i.e. the power changing during the cycle of the machine triggering and cancelling the timer and finally when the timer ran out and the notification was triggered.

Telldus is light years behind Homey regarding how advanced the system is…but they have managed to let the user see what is happening with automations in real time. If there is a will there is a way. :wink:

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And that is why you can test every part of the flow separately, from every flow card if you even wanted.
The light years ahead in advanced-ness also makes it light years ahead more difficult to keep it user friendly for debugging an entire flow run, as that particular flow can run multiple times at the same time (maybe (milli-)seconds difference), and if that is the issue, then you still wouldn’t have found if you would see the flow in real time.
Adding debug logs (there are several apps and ways to do this) is more useful in this case, as you then will see every flow run.

if there are multiple examples for debugging within a flow, can you perhaps point me towards such an example to learn from?

Just add multiple cards in your flow using either the buildin notifications (timeline), though that is a bit limited as there is a rate limit.
And there are multiple apps that can log anything you want by just adding an additinal card and putting any text or tag or token that you would find useful:
https://homey.app/a/nl.nielsdeklerk.log
https://homey.app/a/nu.dijker.papertrails
https://homey.app/a/no.bwa.easy-logger

Examples of such log messages can be:
What step it is in, which will make sure the order of execution is right, and if helpful adding the used token in that step, so you know what state different devices or apps are in.