Fire lit trigger

[jabrans]

I need some help designing an event using mcsTemp as a trigger. I have a temp sensor just above my fireplace. I also have a temp sensor in my dining which is about 6 ft. from the fireplace. I want an event that will do a few things when the fire is going and then execute a few other events when the fire goes out. I've got the device control down okay I just need some help figuring out a way to trigger these two scripts. One when the fire gets going and one when the fire dies out. I need it to be immune to the evening sun heating up the house and causing the computer to think the fire has been lit. I also need it to not think the fire has been lit again after it thinks the fire had gone out. Can I configure an event using mcsTemp as a trigger for this?

Thanks,
Jabran

[UniKyrn]

There is going to be a lot of thermal lag in detecting the fireplace going cold I would think. If this is a gas fireplace, why not put an X-10 module in parallel with the on/off switch to detect when it is open/closed?

[jabrans]

It is a wood fireplace. I don't really need to know when it goes out I just need to know when there is no more heat radiating from it so HS can turn off the circulation fans.

[Michael McSharry]

The general answer is to use a band trigger with mcsTempeature. This will give you the deadzone to not retrigger. The placement of the temp sensor needs to be sufficiently close to the fireplace that it can distinguish fireplace vs sunlight source of heat.

In my case I have the fireplace temp sensor mounted next to the output duct of the fireplace. At times it has approached 200 deg F and has survived two seasons. I also have a powerflash on a damper that is controller by a thermocouple into the firebox. A relay on the fireplace blower will accomplish the same objective. The blower on-off/damper open-closed discrete provides my trigger for fireplace-based events. I also use two room temp sensors and control the furnace fan when the upstairs-downstairs differential is too large so the hot upstairs air (from heat that accumulates due to the fireplace) gets redistributed.

[jabrans]

MCS,
Thanks for the response. My temp sensor for the fireplace is just kind of hanging above the doors to the insert. It's not a very good insert so it doesn't get very hot. You can see from the graph that I attached that it goes up pretty slow, levels off and then jumps again. That's happened two days in a row, don't know why. I'm not here when the fire is going, my wife is home. The red solid line indicates when I told HS there was a fire and based on an event that I had set to go off at 10AM which told HS the fire was out. Only using it in the mornings this time of year here in Edmonds. I lit the fire around 7:10AM. There wasn't a good difference in the fireplace temp and the dining room temp until 8AM. But then a similar more drastic difference occurred again around 11AM after the fire was essentially out, so HS would have thought the fire was still going or had restarted. The sun doesn't start heating up the house until about 3PM with the west facing windows. Maybe I need two sensors near the fireplace. One in direct contact with the insert that gets hotter than the one I have now and the other outside of the immediate heat of the insert but within sunlight range?

Here's the graph that I forgot to attach last night:

[jabrans]

Glass insert blew out two weeks ago which halted my fires for a while. Back in business now though. I have repositioned my temp sensor and now I am seeing temps 120 - 250 degrees F while fire is burning. I created an event but not sure if I've got the idea. I have a trigger based on temp and then I have device control under temp actions. I am trying to control my fireplace fans to be on when a fire is going. I am also trying to control a virtual device so HS knows when a fire is going and when it isn't. Do these screen shots look correct?




Thanks,
Jab

[Michael McSharry]

I suggest that you run the temperature action continuously rather than 1 cycle. Do not put any conditions on it. You can trigger the event any way you want to just get it started such as in your startup.txt script. Once the event is triggered it will then turn off and on the fan based upon the temperature band of 80 and 100. It will work just like a thermostat in this manner. You can add a conditional on the top part of the TriggerAction pane to do something like summer/winter control and/or a x10 or virtual device that can be used to manually start and stop the controller.

Homeseer knows the state of D2 so I do not see a need to replicate the logic with V18.

You can try to do one-time control cycles as you are showing in you attachment but I see no reason for all these dynamics when you simply want the fan to be controlled based upon a temperature. It would be like turning your house thermostat off and on each day rather than letting it run all the time during the heating season.

[jabrans]

It works but what about other actions

I have the event turning on and off my fans based on temp of the fireplace using the band trigger as you suggested. I have it running continuously and it works great. Every once in a while I get a 6.2 or 0 degree reading from the sensor and it turns off the fans. I wasn't using for a month or so because at 213 degrees F my wires melted. I have replaced them with a length of teflon insulated wire and it works. Except that my wife says, "what about teflon gases when hot". I have been telling her not to fry bacon in the teflon pans, cast iron all the way. Guess that's what I get, I know its really okay...

Anyway, here's the question. How can I have the event trigger other actions like speak "the fire is going" or setback the TStat based on a band trigger? Can it run a script?

Thanks,
Jabran

[Michael McSharry]

The Temperature Triggers are used to initiate other homeseer activities. The Temperature Action is the activity that is performed as a result of a trigger. You are correct that the Temperature Action acts as if it should be a trigger, but alas it is only an action.

If you want to have some other actions occur in concert with the control provided by the Temperature Action then you will need to define a second event that has a trigger which is the same as the action. For example a trigger when temperature goes above a limit, or a trigger when the device controlled by Temperature Action turns ON.

[jabrans]

I Think I got it?

Okay I think I got it. I now have the fire trigger turning on V18 which is Fire Status virtual device using the band trigger. I then have a Fire On Command event that is triggered with the status of Fire Status turns on which runs a script to turn fans on, lower tstat, speak, etc. I also have Fire Off Command which is triggered when Fire Status turns off which turns off the fans, speech, etc.

I think that's it. Also, tune in to KOMO AM 1000 Friday morning. There should be a story about home automation and homeseer from Terry Travis.

[Michael McSharry]

Thanks for the broadcast, but I dont think the Albequerque airport will have that station playing.

[jabrans]

Fire trigger not working?

This worked last year and now it is not working. Here's what I have HS 1.7.7, mcsTemp 4.37.7. I have an event "fire trigger" that gets ran from my startup script that turns on device V18 "Living Room Fire" when the Living Room Fireplace Temp sensor is above 100 degrees and turns it off when Living Room Fireplace Temp is below 80 degrees. I have two other events, "fire_on_commands" and "fire_off_commands". When device "Living Room Fire" changes to On it triggers the "fire on" event which runs a script to turn on my fans and announce the fire is on. When "Living Room Fire" changes to Off it runs "fire off" which turns off the fans. I'm not sure why it isn't working this year? I see in my log that the "fire trigger" event is ran.

10/23/2005 1:17:59 PM~!~Speak~!~Welcome to Home-Seer
10/23/2005 1:18:00 PM~!~Event Trigger~!~External Trigger (Fire Trigger)

The Fireplace Temp sensor has a value of over 100 degrees and the "fire on" event is never executed. When it falls below 80 it doesn't execute the "fire off" event either. I've attached a couple of screen shots.

[Michael McSharry]

There has been much done on the plugin in this area. There is now a status device created that shows the "thermostat's" status and this device can be used to turn it on and off. There is a related thread that is active late this summer that has a discussion about it. Upgrade first and if you will have a problem then we will take it from there.

[jabrans]

I downloaded and installed 4.39.0. I changed the device to turn on to device "Temperature Fire Trigger" which was the device the plugin created. I then changed the location to Living Room so I could see it with my fireplace temp device. It shows the device "Living Room Fire Trigger" as Control Inactive with my fireplace temp sensor at 138 degrees. Here's a shot of the Living Room devices:

[Michael McSharry]

I think V18 is the device that you want to control so that is the one that goes in your device action.

#37 is the status device for the device action. It currently shows that the control loop is inactive. You can set it active by changing its status to ON via the HS GUI or any other means. This is the equivalent of triggering the event associated with the device action.

What is significant is that the control is inactive at this time. You can make it active with the new device or with the event trigger. When you do this the status will reflect Active and the controls will be performed as desired.