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    Weclome to the new HS3 Event Clinic forum!

    The folks at HomeSeer offered to create this forum and I offered to help populate it with instructional posts about the various functions of the HS3 Event Engine. While the help documentation provides the basic instructions needed to create an event, the goal of these threads will be to explain in detail and step by step how to create events to be used within your HomeSeer HS3/HS3 Pro installation.

    Please refer to the Table of Contents post to navigate the threads.

    These threads are to be geared toward the general user, with the primary goal of making it possible for any user to create events that will drive the automation of their home. We will try to focus on events, with only minimal discussion of scripts.

    The initial topics to be covered are:

    These threads are to be a work in progress and are likely going to contain some errors from time to time. I ask that if you find errors, have suggestions for additional topics, have suggestions for improvement in format or any other comments on the threads created in this forum please send a PM to rprade. If you wish to make contributions please contact me as well. We really want this to be a group effort and we want to maintain some consistency in how the information is formatted and presented. This forum will be moderated as the initial threads are built. It will likely build slowly, but it is our hope to provide a concise but thorough explanation of the very powerful Event Engine provided as the core of HS3. As questions come up on this board, the above initial list will be expanded if needed.

    Just a quick disclaimer, I am not employed by HomeSeer and this forum is provided as a user to user resource. Anything posted within this forum is the responsibility of the individual posting the information and is not to be construed as an official communication from HomeSeer technologies, LLC.

    If you need technical help from directly HomeSeer Technologies, please use the channels outlined on the Support page.
    Last edited by randy; February 16, 2015, 09:28 PM.
    HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

    #2
    Good idea.
    Don

    Comment


      #3
      I am very happy that Randy is going to be professor for this forum, he seams to have great knowledge of events and conditions for HS3. Yeaa!!!
      Hector
      ____________________________________
      Win.2003 OS, HS3
      BLDSC,BLstat,BLRadar,BLRamdom,BLOccupied
      BLups,BLrain8,HSTouch,Ultrajones Weatherbug,
      MyTrigger,ACRF2,W800,Zwave
      AP800,Honeywell Stat

      Comment


        #4
        Excellent! You are among the most helpful around here.

        Sent from my SCH-R970X using Tapatalk
        HS4Pro on a Raspberry Pi4
        54 Z-Wave Nodes / 21 Zigbee Devices / 108 Events / 767 Devices
        Plugins: Z-Wave / Zigbee Plus / EasyTrigger / AK Weather / OMNI

        HSTouch Clients: 1 Android

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          #5
          Thanks for doing this Randy. Much appreciated! I wish HST would provide a Wiki to allow this type of documentation though.

          Cheers
          Al
          HS 4.2.8.0: 2134 Devices 1252 Events
          Z-Wave 3.0.10.0: 133 Nodes on one Z-Net

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by sparkman View Post
            Thanks for doing this Randy. Much appreciated! I wish HST would provide a Wiki to allow this type of documentation though.

            Cheers
            Al
            We had a Wiki and it wasn't used much and shortly after its introduction it was spammed to the point of closure.
            💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Rupp View Post
              We had a Wiki and it wasn't used much and shortly after its introduction it was spammed to the point of closure.
              Thanks Greg, I don't remember a wiki, so that must have been when I was on my HA hiatus.

              Cheers
              Al
              HS 4.2.8.0: 2134 Devices 1252 Events
              Z-Wave 3.0.10.0: 133 Nodes on one Z-Net

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by sparkman View Post
                Thanks Greg, I don't remember a wiki, so that must have been when I was on my HA hiatus.

                Cheers
                Al
                Possibly. It was within the last 2-3 years but has been shut down for about a year now.
                💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

                Comment


                  #9
                  I appreciate the votes of confidence. With a football game tonight and the holidays coming it may get off to a slow start. I have a fairly clear outline started and will be assembling images and posts. Hopefully I will get in a rhythm and get this rolling soon.

                  While I agree that a Wiki would be another solution, I think this is going to turn out to be very useful. Like I said in the first post, I am open to C & C as it unfolds. Quite a few of us have answered the same event related questions on a fairly regular basis and my thinking was it would be useful to have all of the answers in one place.
                  HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Thanks Randy!
                    Your replies to me and reading your replies to others have already been a big help to me.

                    Now that my HS3 conversion is mostly stable with all my devices entered and functioning, writing and re-writing properly and efficiently functioning Events is my #1 activity.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      This is great! looking forward to seeing some of these topics. I have developed a number of events that "work", but i've always wondered if I was going about it the best way, hopefully this forum will clarify that for me!

                      I always debate whether its better (or any different) to use a wait command or just create another event to fire the second action off another trigger.

                      I have events both ways. For instance when door closes TTS event "door closed" then wait 2 minutes and shut off light. But then on the other hand for my sprinklers I have one event turn on and and another event scheduled 15 minutes later to turn them off... should I just add the wait and shut off to the first command, or does it even matter? I assume the wait command just schedules another event immediately when the first one fires and then terminates so scheduler is handling it all anyway, but using a wait makes me feel like an event is continuing to "run" in the background (although i doubt it is). I shy away from event's that run for a long time (horror flashbacks to radioshack X10 setups on tandy 1000's hah!)

                      Anyway, great idea for this forum, and I look forward to seeing your write-ups!

                      Comment


                        #12
                        There is not necessarily a right or wrong way, nor is one way necessarily better than another. The goal of these posts will be to give you a clearer understanding of the mechanics of events.

                        In my opinion a "Wait" is useful and important for very tightly timed events, when you are dealing with seconds rather than minutes. An event with an action followed by another action with a delay is better when the delay is longer. There will be a post covering this, but a "Wait" within an event causes the running event to pause for each "Wait" command. An event with an action or actions that have a delay creates new "run once" delayed action events and puts them in the "Delayed Actions" group that is created on the fly. If I have an event that runs at 10:00 PM and there is an action to turn a light off after a 15 minute delay, the event runs to completion and creates a new scheduled event to turn the light off at 10:15. The new event is created in the Delayed Actions group and the box to delete the event after running in options is selected.

                        On your sprinklers there is essentially no difference between your two events and a single event with a 15 minute delay, so it is still two events. The advantage of using the delay would be that you could change the start time of the sprinklers or manually trigger a start, and it would automatically create the second event for 15 minutes later. With two events you would have to edit both of them if you wanted to change the time.

                        When you are dealing with tightly timed actions, with only a few seconds of delay, the "Wait" is clearly the choice. If you think about it the HS Event Engine runs through all of the events about once a second. If an event has to create a new Delayed Action event for each delay, then run through the events again a few times it could be sloppy enough to add a few seconds to the delay. If you create a number of Delayed Action events within a single event there is even to off chance they could run out of sequence if the timing is very tight.

                        Understanding how a "Wait" works as compared to a "Delay" makes it a lot easier for you to decide when to use each of them. Intuitively I wouldn't want to use a 15 minute "Wait". While I don't think it would cause a problem, I just don't like the idea of an event sitting there twiddling its thumbs for 15 minutes. While I doubt it would strain most installations and I honestly don't know how it works "under the hood", it just seems like a waste of CPU resources.
                        HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Oh Wow,
                          Good knowledge of HS event engine is key for real HS use. You've kind of been doing this already based on all your detailed and instructional post all over. Thanks for taking the time to put all this together!
                          Tom
                          baby steps...starting again with HS3
                          HS3Pro: Z-NET & 80 Z wave Devices,
                          HSTouch: 4 Joggler (Android Kitkat), 2 iPhone, 3 iPads
                          Whole House Audio: 5 SqueezePlay Jogglers w Bose Speakers
                          In The Works: 10 Cameras Geovision, new Adecmo/Envisalink Alarm, Arduinos
                          System: XP on Fanless Mini-ITX w/ SSD

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Thanks for this, as a new user (who is not at all interested in scripting) it has been frustrating having to search all over to piece together Event information and examples.

                            If I can make a suggestion: Since there is no Wiki, if there is someway to keep the instructions with examples separate (and not touchable by others) from the discussions that would be best and easiest for someone to quickly go to and find out how to do something.

                            You could then pick out any good examples from the discussion threads to incorporate into your instruction section.

                            While a lot of work, Youtube videos of using events would also be great since some folks pick up learning & understanding more visually.

                            Thanks again to you and all the others who have been helping in this area.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              The posts illustrating event navigation, editing and functions will be made sticky and closed. Any discussions will be in separate threads. We'll work out all of the mechanics as we go forward.

                              There will be a video component as well, but it may be a little while before we get there.
                              HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

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