Driveway Alert

[MStan]

How would I get This to run all times of the day but only turn on the lights 30 min before Sunset?

[S-F]

I'm not sure what you're trying to do exactly. The event you have will only turn your light on driveways zone becomes not ready at exactly 30 minutes before sunset. Not sure how uesful that would be. Could you please elaborate on what you're trying to do?

[MStan]

I Want the voice alert at all times of the day or night but only turn on the lights 30 min before sunset. Not sure how to configure it or if there is a better way to set up events in general.

[randy]

How would I get This to run all times of the day but only turn on the lights 30 min before Sunset?

I am guessing you only want it to run after 30 minutes before sunset. Your condition is actually exactly 30 minutes before sunset.

You have several options:

• Create a virtual device to use as a condition in this Event then use another Event to turn it on 30 minutes before sunset and a third to turn it off at whatever time you want stop the primary Event from running.
• You can use the Easy Trigger plug-in Trigger "The time is after (sunset - 30m, 0s)"
• You can build an Easy Trigger schedule for the times where the Event should run

It sounds like you would like this Event to run 24/7 but only turn the lights On during nighttime (30 min before sunset until ??). To do this you would take the Condition out of the above Event and change the second Action to Run another Event only if the conditions are true. Read here. Then the Event you call would be manually triggered, have an Easy Trigger (or virtual device) Condition and the action to control the lights.




You also need to be aware that every HomeSeer "day" begins and ends at Midnight. If you use the above Condition "The time is after (sunset - 30m, 0s)", you need to be aware this really means: "The time is after (sunset - 30m, 0s) but before midnight". For this reason an Easy Trigger schedule might be the easiest. You build a schedule such as this



Then the second Event would look like this (using Easy Trigger schedule):

[MStan]

It sounds like you would like this Event to run 24/7 but only turn the lights On during nighttime (30 min before sunset until ??). To do this you would take the Condition out of the above Event and change the second Action to Run another Event only if the conditions are true. Read here. Then the Event you call would be manually triggered, have an Easy Trigger (or virtual device) Condition and the action to control the lights.

Yes I want the event to run 24/7 but only turn on the lights 30 min after sunset not sure about the off time tho. I have easy trigger but never could figure how to set it up.

[randy]

If you would like me to put together a post on how to set up an Easy Trigger schedule and how to use it in your Events, I would be happy to tomorrow.

[MStan]

Yes Please and Thank You! I'm working on Setting up easy trigger now. Thanks Randy

[randy]

Here are some tips to starting with an Easy Trigger schedule. First you need to go to the Configuration of the plug-in



Then click the + symbol to create a new schedule



Pick a name and "Submit"



The new blank schedule will appear at the bottom of the list. The schedules are stored in the order they were created, they are not sorted after creation.



If you click the "Edit" button, you will get a new, blank schedule



This is really quick and easy to create a new simple schedule. Here I clicked on Wednesday at 3:40 and dragged the cursor to 16:00 (4:00PM). You c an click in the middle of a schedule and drag it up or down to move the entire block. If you click and release you will be asked if you want to delete the block. You can click on the dot at the bottom of the block and drag to increase or decrease the duration of the block. If you drag the block to before or after midnight, it will overlap into the previous or next day. The block cannot pass Midnight on Sunday night in either direction, this is not a bug in the plug-in it is a .net limitation.



While the click and drag works well for a simple schedule I prefer to edit the schedules as text. I do this because there is no way to add an offset to sunrise or sunset by clicking and dragging. The bulk of my schedules take sunrise and sunset into consideration. Here is a schedule I use for motion controlled lighting in the house.



It is a simple schedule from 30 minutes before sunset until 30 minutes after sunrise the next day, every day. To look at this schedule as pure text in notepad it would be



I prefer to format it differently to make it easier to visualize what it is doing by putting each day on a new line.



Arranged as above it is much easier to see what is going on. It is also clear how to transition midnight on Sunday night. This is done by scheduling from 30 minutes before sunset Sunday until Midnight [Sun Sunset-00:30;Mon 00:00] and then from midnight until 30 minutes after sunrise on Monday [Mon 00:00;Mon Sunrise+00:30]. I keep a few of these text based schedules as boilerplates from which to build a new one. Even though I changed the format by putting each block on a new line, when all of the text is copied and pasted into Easy Trigger it will be formatted properly as it is saved.

When I want to edit a schedule, I usually copy the text version out to Notepad for editing then copy it back into Easy Trigger. It is much easier than editing in that little text box.

After you have built your schedules, it is time to use them in events. Continued next post...

[randy]

Once a schedule is created you can use it in Events as a Trigger or a Condition. As a Trigger, you can trigger upon the instant it enters or leaves a schedule block. If you cross midnight on Sunday with two blocks as discussed above, it will appear as one block to Easy Trigger.



After you choose the type of Easy Trigger Trigger, you can pick the schedule





This Event will now trigger each day at 30 minutes before Sunset as used in the schedule in the post above.

For Conditions there are 6 choices, two of which work with schedules



You can choose:

• This time is in this week schedule time range - if the current time is within one of the weekly schedule blocks it is true, otherwise it is false
• This time is NOT in this week schedule time range - if the current time is within one of the weekly schedule blocks it is false, otherwise it is true
• The time is before (sunrise +/- T)
• The time is after (sunrise +/- T)
• The time is before (sunset +/- T)
• The time is after (sunset +/- T)

While the last four conditions are not using schedules, they fill a need that standard HS Conditions cannot. They allow you to apply conditions with an offset based upon dynamic sunrise and sunset times. For instance "The time is before (sunrise +/- T)" allows you to start a time block at Midnight (remember the HS daily dividing line at Midnight) until some predetermined period before or after sunrise. If I use sunrise + 30min and sunrise is at 6:44AM, the Condition would be true from Midnight until 7:14AM.

For scheduling the Conditions are much like the Triggers. If the current time is within a block one condition is true and the other is false.

[randy]

So to answer your first post, here is my suggestion. The first event is triggered by driveway occupancy and announces that someone is in the driveway. It will run 24/7. I have stipulated Cannot Re-Run for 5 minutes, to keep it from repeating too frequently.



The second action in the above Event calls a secondary Event that will turn the driveway lights on if it falls within a Easy Trigger schedule. It is very important to note the advanced option: "Run Only If Other Event Conditions are TRUE". If this is selected the called event will only run if its conditions are true, if they are not true the call will be ignored.

The second Event has a manual trigger. When an Event is run from another Event Triggers are ALWAYS ignored, so the trigger doesn't matter. If the Event is only going to be run from another Event, a manual Trigger will make sure nothing else can trigger it. The first thing the second Event does is to remove any Delayed Device Actions that may have been created from running this Event before. If there was a 5 minute Delayed Device Action created 4-1/2 minutes ago, the light would be turned off in 30 secondes. This is good practice in any Event, but in this case it is less important because the triggering Event can only run once every 5 min and the Delayed Device Action is 5 minutes. Then it turns the light On. Then it creates a fresh Delayed Device action to turn the light Off after 30 minutes.



Hopefully this all makes sense.

[lhfarm]

Big fan of Easy Trigger, but for years, I've set a virtual device DayNight to control the actions of the driveway alert. I have 2 events, one to set the status of DayNight to "Night" at 10 minutes before sunset and one to set the status to "Day" 10 minutes after sunrise. Then my driveway alert event checks to see if it is "Night". If so, I turn on lights.

[randy]

A virtual device was one of the three solutions I suggested in post #4 above. It is certainly a good solution. The reasons I prefer an Easy Trigger schedule are because se a virtual device can fall out of sync where a schedule cannot, a schedule can be easily modified, visualized and varied for each day of the week.