Jon00 Event Viewer & Documenter for HS3

Thanks to this script, I have been able to reduce the number of events to about 1540 so far. I found a bunch of broken events due to devices that have been replaced over the last couple of years. While repairing those events I also was led to some I could improve. I am still working on it, but expect to reduce the event count by another 100.

As it must be obvious, describing all the events and their function would take a while, but here is some of what we do:

• Most things are affected by work schedules, time, temperature, occupancy. We control heat, DHW (hot water), lighting and power by work schedule, occupancy, distance from home and time
• Lighting levels are controlled by time of day and outside luminance and are affected by work schedule and occupancy. We use 5 modes for lighting, Daytime, Twilight (around sunrise/sunset), Nighttime, low light and asleep/awake. The initial lighting level is set based on these modes and adjusted as time transitions to a new mode. Automated lighting is also affected by activity. Motion controlled lighting is disabled in rooms where we are watching TV. In the media room, lighting is adjusted based on activity. The lighting is lower when we drop the screen and watch projected video than when we are watching the direct view. Lighting simulates occupancy at night when the house is vacant
• Announcements are made for washer/dryer ready, mail delivered, coffee ready, weather alerts, "mom" and "dad" arriving home, time, temperature and humidity, problems, reminders, etc. Announcements are disabled at night, but alerts will continue. The washer and dryer status is reflected in several places on LED rings of smart switches
• Systems are monitored for trouble. These include freezers, refrigerator, heating. air conditioning, network. If there is a problem a pushover message is sent or if the problem is with our connectivity another alert is issued. HomeSeer connected systems are also monitored for problems. If OneWire servers, Z-Nets, Arduinos, Envisalink or Brultech Gem go offline or stop reporting, the device and/or plug-in are restarted and notifications sent
• The surveillance system (including individual cameras) are monitored for online status
• The security system is controlled by and controls occupancy status. Doors, door locks and windows are checked each night as we go to sleep. Doors are locked and announcements are generated if anything is open when we go to sleep.
• The gas temperatures, air temperatures and electrical consumption of air conditioning is evaluated and notifications are sent if the performance is not within nominal.
• Hydronic (heat and hot water) is also monitored. The boiler temperatures, pipe temperatures, zone valve status, circulator and burner are evaluated for problems
• DHW and zone heating is evaluated to make best use of the boiler. Our DHW is indirectly heated from the same boiler as our heat. We try to limit short cycles and recover as much heat from the boiler as possible for DHW heating in the summer when we don't need heat. There are "emergency" methods to run the circulator and open zone valves when pipe temperatures get close to freezing.
• Heating and setback temperatures are adjusted based on occupancy, outside temperatures and work schedule. Bathrooms are preheated on work days for morning showers
  {*]Scheduling "knows" holidays, adjusting heating, lighting power and announcements
• Our phones are at the center of the house "knowing" our locations. The polling rate of the phones is adjusted based on relative location to conserve battery. If batteries report low levels, polling is further
• There are some "fun" lighting events for holidays, local team sporting events, etc.
• Power is also managed by occupancy, time and work schedule. A lot of "vampire" electrical loads are reduced whenever possible. Systems are turned off at night or when the house is vacant. Items with high standby consumption are disconnected when unused. Workshop and garage battery chargers are powered on a schedule.
• Many lights are controlled by motion, with manual overrides if needed. Motion controls can be temporarily or permanently suspended or enabled by HomeSeer switch "scenes". Lights that are left on accidentally are turned off.
• With sub-freezing temperatures, our air compressor is shut down and an outdoor pump is disabled. If it is freezing and snow is forecast, our satellite TV dish is heated. In super low temperatures, our standby generator battery and engine heaters are powered
• Our generator is exercised once a week in November through April. If a problem occurs during exercise a notification is sent
• If a water leak is detected the household water is turned off. When we are on vacation, it is shut off. A water and natural gas usage monitor is on the wish list - we may add one, or monitor the pulses from the water and gas meters

The above is just an overview, I'm sure there are items I missed. Our goal is to eliminate personal interaction with systems as much as possible. The only daily required function is to tell the house we are going to sleep - we use a remote at bedside to set this. We also have to tell the house when we are going on vacation for extended periods, but it still knows when we are more than 50 miles from home.

Thank you Prade

[randy]

Under the sort-by option, select "Event Disabled - Ascending"

I saw that. As I emailed you, I cannot scroll when a full list of my events is shown. This is probably due to my large number of events. If I filter on broken events, I can scroll on that small number of events. If I could filter disabled, it would be a smaller list and wouldn't lock up when scrolling.

[bdraper]

There is no change to the web page code from the version that you had. The only change I made was to the report sub-routine which is not even called when viewing it as a web page.

Is this just calling the page without any filters? Are there any additional error messages in the HS Log?

Nothing additional in the log other than what is displayed in the webpage, same message. I was calling the webpage with no filters, just trying to navigate to it for the first time today.

Anyway, I downloaded the files again, same thing. Was getting ready to restart HomeSeer just to see if that would produce any positive results... but decided to navigate to the HomeSeer event page. Then I navigated to the Jon00EventViewer.asp, and Jon00EventViewer.aspx page without any issue... Yep, I agree, that's just weird... but hey it's working.

Thanks again for all you do.

[SteveMSJ]

Jon00,

This is absolutely phenomenal and I can appreciate the hard work that has gone in to producing it. I have been playing around this evening with my 484 events and immediately found one or two broken that I hadn't spotted before.

Also, I had pretty much stopped bothering to document events with notes because having to click on the notes icon of each event to see what I had written was just too cumbersome. Seeing the notes listed out with the event makes them so much more useful. In future it will be worth the effort to document complex events so I can remember my reasoning when creating them.

Thanks again.

Steve

[jon00]

Jon, I just downloaded the latest version and received this error when executing the Jon00EventViewer.asp page...

Oops! Something went wrong. Try a page refresh.

Error in Main Block 14: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at scriptcode31.VBWrapper.Main(Object MyData)

I get the same error if when trying to access the Jon00EventViewer.aspx page.

I looked at the PDF guide and did not see that I need to do any configuration... did I miss something. The older version I had was working with no issues.

There is no change to the web page code from the version that you had. The only change I made was to the report sub-routine which is not even called when viewing it as a web page.

Is this just calling the page without any filters? Are there any additional error messages in the HS Log?

[jon00]

Thanks Jon. In light of my large number of events I would like to request a filter choice of "Disabled" to help identify disabled events. It could be right under "Broken".

Under the sort-by option, select "Event Disabled - Ascending"

[bdraper]

Jon, I just downloaded the latest version and received this error when executing the Jon00EventViewer.asp page...

Oops! Something went wrong. Try a page refresh.

Error in Main Block 14: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at scriptcode31.VBWrapper.Main(Object MyData)

I get the same error if when trying to access the Jon00EventViewer.aspx page.

I looked at the PDF guide and did not see that I need to do any configuration... did I miss something. The older version I had was working with no issues.

[randy]

Thanks Jon. In light of my large number of events I would like to request a filter choice of "Disabled" to help identify disabled events. It could be right under "Broken".

[jon00]

V1.0.0 now available for download

I've now written up the documentation and packaged this up. You can now download it from my site.

If you were one of the testers, please also download and replace your existing script. I discovered a very small bug with the report scripting interface. This is detailed in the documentation.

Known Limitations

[ScottRennie]

I started using calendar /email events. That is, since I run my own e-mail server, I can just plug into Outlook calendar holidays or whatever. With my e-mail server, it automatically sends an e-mail reminder to my mailbox. HS just does a pop to it and depending on the subject, handles the event. One example is holidays. I normally have the bedroom lights come on in the morning and with this mechanism, if it's a holiday, the event doesn't run.
I think there are users using Google calendar for this as well.

Robert

That's what I do - Use Keywords in Google Calendar entries

[langenet]

I started using calendar /email events. That is, since I run my own e-mail server, I can just plug into Outlook calendar holidays or whatever. With my e-mail server, it automatically sends an e-mail reminder to my mailbox. HS just does a pop to it and depending on the subject, handles the event. One example is holidays. I normally have the bedroom lights come on in the morning and with this mechanism, if it's a holiday, the event doesn't run.
I think there are users using Google calendar for this as well.

Robert

[randy]

Wow that was pretty much the solution I’d come up with. Wish there was a plug-in to handle this. Some calendar plug-in was written but abandoned and there’s blades google plug-in didnt get it down tho. Just something to automatically do what you’re doing here... worst part is it would be simple to code. Wanted to do the same thing you did to with tracking trash and recycling days. Then i started thinking about the other stuff like home maintenance reminders. Now it’s all spread out across so many things. And lastly a magic mirror showing it all. Guess a guy can dream so until then events here I come!

Wadenut's daily reminder script is pretty good for spoken reminders, but it doesn't take into consideration trash day offsets or remind you the day before a holiday that is not on a fixed date schedule. It isn't real easy with Google scrubbing either, so I decided to hard code the dozen or so holidays. Once I had the four devices being updated, they could be used in any number of events.

If tomorrow is the scheduled holiday for Christmas, I keep the lights on later and move the setback later on heating. If today is the scheduled holiday for Christmas, the daily setback of the heat and hot water is disabled and energy saving is disabled since it is anticipated that the house will be occupied all day.

[kideon]

Wow that was pretty much the solution I’d come up with. Wish there was a plug-in to handle this. Some calendar plug-in was written but abandoned and there’s blades google plug-in didnt get it down tho. Just something to automatically do what you’re doing here... worst part is it would be simple to code. Wanted to do the same thing you did to with tracking trash and recycling days. Then i started thinking about the other stuff like home maintenance reminders. Now it’s all spread out across so many things. And lastly a magic mirror showing it all. Guess a guy can dream so until then events here I come!

[randy]

I track holidays on two levels, one is for actual holidays and the other is for the scheduled (work affecting) holiday. They are hard coded into events that generate 4 device states.



At 12:00:01 each morning, I move the Holiday Tomorrow (actual and scheduled) values to the Holiday Today devices and set the Holiday Tomorrow devices to No Holiday.



At 12:00:10 each morning I set the Holiday Tomorrow devices with Events.



I populate the scheduled holiday master event with only the holidays work observes.

Holidays that occur on a specific day of the month, take a little extra work to calculate the day before. In the case of Thanksgiving the actual and scheduled are the same.



For a holiday like Christmas they are different



These devices are used for announcements as well as heating, power and lighting that will be on a different schedule before and during a holiday. Trash pickup announcements are delayed by a day on weeks that have a holiday.

We have motion sensors in every room, used for controlling motion controlled lighting as well as for our security system. We have a DSC PC-1864 panel, communicating with HomeSeer via an Envisalink module. Envisalink will also send notifications through Eyez-on exclusive of HomeSeer.

I have never gotten occupancy to be correct with motion sensors, but it is 100% accurate using PHLocation and our phones. If we leave home without our phones (only about twice in two years) setting the security system will tell HomeSeer the house is unoccupied, though it is not critical that HomeSeer knows if the house is occupied or not as it only affects energy consumption.

[kideon]

How doe you manage the holidays and are for room by room occupancy just motion sensors? I was thinking about getting in depth on that and to create a simulated fuzzy logic it would take quite a number of events... wanting to start setting different lighting schemes based on holiday, time of year etc. Also how are you managing schedules? Right now I’ve gone as far as a virtual device that I trigger if I’m working from home tomorrow...