Conditions

[nightwalker]

Being brand new to this software, maybe i'm overlooking something, but can anyone tell me how in HS do i get an event to only run by the month of the year. I use a condition to turn on holiday lighting in certian months?

I've also used a condition for my bathroom lights so that between the hours of 1am and 6am they only come on at 50% instead of jarring me awake in the middle of the night.

Since i'm not seeing choices for those kinds of conditions, is that something that is done via script?

any help or hints would be greatly appriciated.

[Msekelsky]

Being brand new to this software, maybe i'm overlooking something, but can anyone tell me how in HS do i get an event to only run by the month of the year. I use a condition to turn on holiday lighting in certian months?.

To the best of my knowledge you need a script to specify months. I just let my holiday event run every month of the year since nothing happens if I don't have any lights plugged in.

I've also used a condition for my bathroom lights so that between the hours of 1am and 6am they only come on at 50% instead of jarring me awake in the middle of the night..

This should be doable with an event. How are you turing the lights on? Let's assume you use a mini controller set to A10. Your conditions would be:

A10 turned to ON
The Time is greater than 1 AM
The time is less than 6 AM

Device action sets the lights to 50%

[JustOneMore]

I just disable the holiday event lighting when I don't want them run. An evant to check for calendar start/stop is doable though.

[nightwalker]

more conditions

To the best of my knowledge you need a script to specify months. I just let my holiday event run every month of the year since nothing happens if I don't have any lights plugged in.

This should be doable with an event. How are you turing the lights on? Let's assume you use a mini controller set to A10. Your conditions would be:

A10 turned to ON
The Time is greater than 1 AM
The time is less than 6 AM

Device action sets the lights to 50%

I should have specified how i trigger the bathroom lights. A door contact triggers a powerflash to send a x10 command of D4, on when the door is closed, that x10 command triggers an event that turns on the bathroom light D1 on, and a Fan, D2 on. In other software i've used i've been able to set a condition that after 1am and before 6am the light only goes on at 50%, and the fan is not turned on at all.

I'm guessing i'm going to have to learn scripting in order to access the power of this program completely. Basic schedules were fairly easy but beyond that scripting seems the way to get the real work done.

[Rupp]

NightWalker,
Welcome to the HS bb. You can easily apply conditions to an event by checking the apply conditions to trigger. Then select the conditins button and add your if time .... etc It may take 2 events one for the earlier hours and one for the "special" hours.

[Msekelsky]

To Rupp's point you can certainly accomplish what you want without scripts, it just sounds like it will take two events. One event for 1-6 and one for 6-1.

[nightwalker]

conditions

those solutions sound like they will do the trick. Look like i need to think more outside the box. It never occured to me to do it in two events. I'm off to try it now.

Thank you all so much. When i get a little more experience perhaps i'll be able to help someone else.

[Msekelsky]

nightwalker- WhenI first cam to HS I came from another product and my mind was rooted in those paradigms. I thought I was going to need all kinds of scripts to dowhat I wanted. While I do have some scripts, the vast majority is handled by events. Very powerful once you get the gist.

[nightwalker]

i'm learning to be a bit more flexible

I've managed to get the conditions sort of working for the bathroom lights. What i've noticed is that with a condition applied it can take up to 3 to 4 seconds to trigger the event. When i let it run with no conditions applied it's instant. Is this a normal? I makes some people nervous standing in there in the dark, then they open the door and everything resets and starts again till they finally just read the labels on the keypad and turn on the lights manually. I've played with a lot of the choices for conditions, some work, some don't seem to, as a specific the sunrise to midnight just sits there. I see the trigger x10 command in the log but HS takes no action after. Also the program doesn't seem to like the 6am to 1am and 1am to 6am times, it only works if i reset it to 6am to 11:59pm and 12am to 5:59am. i'm assuming like a lot of programs dealing with time HS has a little trouble with that witching hour of midnight? I'll play with it some more and maybe learn something.

On another note. My wife decorates for every holiday she can find, it's how and why i first got into HA. She does something different every month and the outlets i've installed for her do different things at different times for different lenghts of time. Yes i could just write 12 events and disable 11 of them depending on the month, but it would be easier to walk over and turn on the switch, but that's no fun HA is supposed to be just that, automated. There as got to be a way in a product as powerful as HS seems to be to do a month to month event. Even the smarthome manager had that much and it was pretty weak as far as some running events went. Any suggestions?

[Rupp]

nightwalker,

A month to month type scenario can be done in HS but its not native to the out of the box scenario. There was a calendar style event manager floating around a while back but I can't remember who wrote it and couldn't find it via a search. Hopefully someone will remember and post a link.

[Msekelsky]

I'd say 3-4 seconds is a long time if you are seeing more instant without the condition. If I remember correctly the "no condition" is the PowerFlash sending a signal to HS which in turn turns the light ON? If that is true then adding in conditions such as "only do the light full bright when in this time range" should be negligable. I can't think why this would be any slower, but perhaps somebody else will have a thought.

One thing to know (at least I think this is true) is that every event has to have some type of a trigger. Something has to change to get the event kicked off. If you set up an event that is "By Condition" and you do not have something in that condition that triggers the event "such as d4 CHANGED to on" your event may not execute or may only execute at the top of every minute (since the time changed). IOW

If the time is greater than midnight
And the time is less than 6 AM
and d4 is ON

is NOT the same as

If the time is greater than midnight
And the time is less than 6 AM
and d4 is CHANGED to ON

For the holiday lighting, to the best of my knowledge you can do month to month, but this is a situation where you'll want a script instead of an event(s)

[nightwalker]

After the holidays i'm going to have to buckle down and learn how to write scripts i believe. I admit that this software has lots of potential to intagrate most everything i can think of and some i've not. I just need to get better at it, but hey, i've only had it less than a week i'll have to get better sooner or later

nightwalker,

A month to month type scenario can be done in HS but its not native to the out of the box scenario. There was a calendar style event manager floating around a while back but I can't remember who wrote it and couldn't find it via a search. Hopefully someone will remember and post a link.

[nightwalker]

I'll try that, right now i am in fact using the D4 on trigger as opposed to the D4 changed to on. I'm guessing every program has it's own little quirks, or i do and i just need to get used to one, and fix the other

I'd say 3-4 seconds is a long time if you are seeing more instant without the condition. If I remember correctly the "no condition" is the PowerFlash sending a signal to HS which in turn turns the light ON? If that is true then adding in conditions such as "only do the light full bright when in this time range" should be negligable. I can't think why this would be any slower, but perhaps somebody else will have a thought.

One thing to know (at least I think this is true) is that every event has to have some type of a trigger. Something has to change to get the event kicked off. If you set up an event that is "By Condition" and you do not have something in that condition that triggers the event "such as d4 CHANGED to on" your event may not execute or may only execute at the top of every minute (since the time changed). IOW

If the time is greater than midnight
And the time is less than 6 AM
and d4 is ON

is NOT the same as

If the time is greater than midnight
And the time is less than 6 AM
and d4 is CHANGED to ON

For the holiday lighting, to the best of my knowledge you can do month to month, but this is a situation where you'll want a script instead of an event(s)