Easy Trigger plug-in - Feature Requests

[randy]

Thanks. That is why I hate "OR IF", because you have to duplicate all the other triggers/conditions as well. It gets messy quickly.

Not to be contrary, but once an event is built and working, who would see that it is "messy"?

I would be interested to hear how it could be designed to be equally flexible, yet not messy in its own right.

[stefxx]

Not to be contrary, but once an event is built and working, who would see that it is "messy"?

I would be interested to hear how it could be designed to be equally flexible, yet not messy in its own right.

I have a lot of events that run only at nighttime. Some have several triggers/conditions. And some already contain "OR IF". To make use of the +/- time feature I basically have to duplicate all triggers/conditions at all of those events and every change in trigger/condition require twice the work. The events that already have "OR IF" needs to be duplicated or they get really complicated.

So... I think we should be able to group AND and OR statements, just as in any programming language. That would really make it powerful and flexible. But I believe HomeSeer's statement is that that would become too complicated for the average user, if I recall correctly. Nothing Spud can do about, but making a "nighttime" (and "daytime"?) +/- time condition would make it less likely to become a "messy" event.

Just my 2 cents...

[randy]

Is there a way the "Toggle" function can be aware of the current value of a device in choosing the next step. If you have a toggle set to Off, On it seems to work fine, always toggling to the opposite of where the device is set.


With a series of values, in my case it is 10%, 25%, 40% 60% and On. Regardless of where the light is set, toggle, takes it to the next value after the last. For Example if I run the action with the light Off, it might set to 10%. If I manually turn the light off then run the action again it will set to 25%. If I manually set the light to On, the action will set it to 60%. It seems that the toggle action just steps through the values in order regardless of what the value of the light is.

Would it be possible for the action to evaluate the current value of the device then "toggle" to the next logical successive value. In order for this to work, the toggle values would have to be sorted in order of value, which is not currently enforced as illustrated here:



In order fort this to work, the values would have to be in ascending order. If it was to work in descending order, there might have to be a Toggle (or Step) Up and a Toggle (or Step) Down function.

Another thing that came up in the same discussion was the "Set Device to another Device" action. Perhaps there could be a minimum or maximum value such as Set Device1 to Device2 +10 Max 99 -or- Set Device1 to Device2 -10 Min 1. I realize this could be done with "Set Device to expression, but it might be easier for some to set the values in an controlled event environment.

[spud]

With a series of values, in my case it is 10%, 25%, 40% 60% and On. Regardless of where the light is set, toggle, takes it to the next value after the last. For Example if I run the action with the light Off, it might set to 10%. If I manually turn the light off then run the action again it will set to 25%. If I manually set the light to On, the action will set it to 60%. It seems that the toggle action just steps through the values in order regardless of what the value of the light is.

That's not exactly true. If "On" is both a control and a status, and if when you manually set the light to On, it actually sets it to the On status, then the toggle action should behave as you expect, i.e it should always set it to 10%.
The plugin reads the current status value of the device, and if this value is also one of the control value that you have in your toggle action, then it uses that as the reference. If the current value doesn't match any of the control value in the list, then it uses the last known toggle action as the reference.

What I suspect in your example, is that manually turning on the light actually set the light to a value that is not one of the controls.

[randy]

That's not exactly true. If "On" is both a control and a status, and if when you manually set the light to On, it actually sets it to the On status, then the toggle action should behave as you expect, i.e it should always set it to 10%.
The plugin reads the current status value of the device, and if this value is also one of the control value that you have in your toggle action, then it uses that as the reference. If the current value doesn't match any of the control value in the list, then it uses the last known toggle action as the reference.

What I suspect in your example, is that manually turning on the light actually set the light to a value that is not one of the controls.

You are correct. Setting the light manually to a value that is not enumerated in the toggle values results in it stepping to the next successive value from the last used toggle value, regardless of the device's value. In the examples above, Off was not one of the toggle values.

[AutomatedJim]

You are correct. Setting the light manually to a value that is not enumerated in the toggle values results in it stepping to the next successive value from the last used toggle value, regardless of the device's value. In the examples above, Off was not one of the toggle values.

I like the toggle feature but not being able to have it 'start over' if someone manually changes the light had me confused.

Can an action be added to reset the toggle to the beginning if someone manually operates the switch?

IE: I set up a light to start at on, then dim to 75%, 50%, 25%, off. It has toggled through to 25%, someone walks up to the switch and manually turns the light on to 100%. The reset action would start the toggle process over. Another scenario, the light has toggled down to 25%, someone raised the dim level to 80%. The toggle process doesn't reset completely, only to the next value, IE in my example 75%.

Thanks,

Jim

[jpick]

Sunrise / Sunset (Not before / Not after)

Hi Spud, great plugin really has helped me get up-to speed on HS3 and what I can do with scheduling more generally. I am looking at using sunrise / sunset in my schedule but want to put limits on the time. For example I want a blind to open at sunrise but not before 7am. I want them to close at sunset but at least by 8:30pm. Is this something that is already available? I could see a not before / not after being useful against both sunrise / sunset in different scenarios. Thanks

[spud]

Hi Spud, great plugin really has helped me get up-to speed on HS3 and what I can do with scheduling more generally. I am looking at using sunrise / sunset in my schedule but want to put limits on the time. For example I want a blind to open at sunrise but not before 7am. I want them to close at sunset but at least by 8:30pm. Is this something that is already available? I could see a not before / not after being useful against both sunrise / sunset in different scenarios. Thanks

why don't you use some simple "AND IF the time is before/after" additional conditions in your events?

[jpick]

why don't you use some simple "AND IF the time is before/after" additional conditions in your events?

That for sure is possible however and happy todo so. However my thinking was along these lines
- I was tying to put all scheduling times in one place - the easytrigger schedule
- By using the schedule I would be able to make adjustments without changing the event rules
- Using the schedule I could set simple events to switch to a different schedule during vacations
- Unless I've got this wrong using the schedule dramatically reduces the number of events I need

Thinking around my last point is as follows.

During the summer months without a limit the blinds would open in London at 4:45am so I would need a condition not to run the event if it's before 6am. I would then need separate event to open the blinds at 6am. And need another do open them at 8am on a Weekend. As the summer ends and the days shorten, the sunrise time works well. During the winter months they would open about 8am

Similar limits apply in the evening. Without a limit the blinds would close about 9:30pm in the summer unless I put an additional event in place to close them earlier.

Anyway that was my logic / thinking I'm happy to add events and conditions was just seeing if it made sense to have the rules in the schedule something like [Mon Sunrise >07:00; Mon Sunset <20:00]. Many thanks for coming back to me.

[sirmeili]

That for sure is possible however and happy todo so. However my thinking was along these lines
- I was tying to put all scheduling times in one place - the easytrigger schedule
- By using the schedule I would be able to make adjustments without changing the event rules
- Using the schedule I could set simple events to switch to a different schedule during vacations
- Unless I've got this wrong using the schedule dramatically reduces the number of events I need

Thinking around my last point is as follows.

During the summer months without a limit the blinds would open in London at 4:45am so I would need a condition not to run the event if it's before 6am. I would then need separate event to open the blinds at 6am. And need another do open them at 8am on a Weekend. As the summer ends and the days shorten, the sunrise time works well. During the winter months they would open about 8am

Similar limits apply in the evening. Without a limit the blinds would close about 9:30pm in the summer unless I put an additional event in place to close them earlier.

Anyway that was my logic / thinking I'm happy to add events and conditions was just seeing if it made sense to have the rules in the schedule something like [Mon Sunrise >07:00; Mon Sunset <20:00]. Many thanks for coming back to me.

You don't need to add more events. Just add more "triggers/conditions" using ORs to trigger the same event actions. I have some events with 5+ sets of triggers/conditions.

[randy]

Hi Spud, great plugin really has helped me get up-to speed on HS3 and what I can do with scheduling more generally. I am looking at using sunrise / sunset in my schedule but want to put limits on the time. For example I want a blind to open at sunrise but not before 7am. I want them to close at sunset but at least by 8:30pm. Is this something that is already available? I could see a not before / not after being useful against both sunrise / sunset in different scenarios. Thanks

It is very easy to do with standard HomeSeer Triggers/Conditions:



If you wanted to schedule differently based upon the days of the week, you could also use an EasyTrigger schedule in place of the Homeseer Triggers and or Conditions.

[jpick]

Thanks all that does simplify things.

[sirmeili]

@spud, this may be an incredibly stupid idea, but I was wondering if you could add an action to easytrigger that does this:


Set Device to Value X if not Y

So:

Set Device Value to ON if not OFF.

This kind of integrates an "action" and a condition.

I can see some good uses for this, such as this:

If Kitchen Motion Changes and Becomes "Motion"
Then remove Delayed Device Actions "Kitchen Lights"
Then Set Kitchen Lights to ON if not OFF
Then Set Kitchen Lights to Off after a delay of "10 minutes"

This way, you get "Automated lights" in 1 event (I can find faults in the logic above, mind you, but it was just a quick example).


It would be nice if this same logic could be applied to the "Set device value to another Devices Value if not this other devices value", but that might be asking for too much.

[jpick]

Next Scheduled time

Hi, I would like to be able to display on the HSTouch app the time of the next scheduled change.

My use case: I am using the easy trigger schedule for my boiler control. "IF time enters boiler time range set boiler to on". What I would like to do at this point is put the next leaving time of the schedule on the HSTouch app. This allows a user to clearly see when the boiler will next go off (or on).

I can see that this could be done by setting a value on a virtual device. Or updating a timer value to this specific time.

Are there any other ways of doing this? Is is possible for EasyTrigger to set this value?

Thanks for any thoughts.

[spud]

@spud, this may be an incredibly stupid idea, but I was wondering if you could add an action to easytrigger that does this:


Set Device to Value X if not Y

So:

Set Device Value to ON if not OFF.

This kind of integrates an "action" and a condition.

I can see some good uses for this, such as this:

If Kitchen Motion Changes and Becomes "Motion"
Then remove Delayed Device Actions "Kitchen Lights"
Then Set Kitchen Lights to ON if not OFF
Then Set Kitchen Lights to Off after a delay of "10 minutes"

This way, you get "Automated lights" in 1 event (I can find faults in the logic above, mind you, but it was just a quick example).


It would be nice if this same logic could be applied to the "Set device value to another Devices Value if not this other devices value", but that might be asking for too much.

I think I could add an optional condition to all the EasyTrigger actions. This condition field would only appear if the advanced mode is activated, and would be defined using a boolean expression that can contains replacement variables (e.g. $$DVR:234: == 0)
What do you think?