Hello!
Some of our bridges have the option showsVA=true and the machine status switches to busy above a certain value, as we charge them only when really working. I would like to get the current VA value through the API, or at least the information if the machine is busy or idle at the moment. Is there any API function to call for that?
The only thing I found in Fabman is the information, how long the machine was busy (for invoicing), but only after usage, no real time information.
Thank you for your help!
Regards,
Alice
Hey Alice,
unfortunately you can’t query the busy/idle status via the API right now. The current status is determined on the bridge and never sent to the server. Only the total busy/idle duration is ever sent to the server.
Can you explain what you want to do? In which situation do you want to fetch the busy status and what do you want to achieve with it?
Hello Raphael,
thank you for your quick answer, which is sparing me further trying 
We were interested in getting the value (or the status) in order to monitor machine utilization in real time, and also to analyze data such as makeready/setup times and similar - it would be a practical solution without buying further devices to determine the actual power consumption.
Since the VA are determined on the bridge - is there any hope for us that we will be able to query it via API in the future, maybe in a following update? That would be great!
Thank you! Regards, Alice
we haven’t planned to ship the VA values to the servers to offer them via the API at the moment, but I’ll keep your idea in mind when we discuss further developments.
Btw: You can get the busy/idle status as an electrical signal directly from the bridge if you go to the Equipment’s bridge settings and change “auxiliary relay” to “switch on while busy”:
But I don’t think that helps in your situation.
Thank you very much for your help 
I will give a look at it and check if we can use the electrical signal for a solution in the meantime.
Have a nice weekend
Alice
