Google Calendar

[Rupp]

Can you sync google calendar to outlook and use BLOutlook or some other outlook plugin to control?

Yes.

[Czechmarty]

Can you sync google calendar to outlook and use BLOutlook or some other outlook plugin to control?

Good point. I know in the past the Google cal had a problem when syncing with Outlook, but maybe it works now. If that would be the case maybe I'll take that root. (Or at least for now before somebody smart will come up with plugin... )

[bpm32]

If HS could read a google calendar, whether it's today's events or events 30 days from now, that would be a great start for my needs. I don't need any type of html front end for this (unless I'm missing the obvious) - if I'm going to get on a computer to see my calendar, I'll just get on Google Calendar. Maybe down the road I could see how it might be nice to be able to add events via HS, but for now as I said, just having HS be able to read my calendar would be a great. If this plugin came with the ability to read multiple accounts and/or subscribed calendars, that would be even better. (I know, now I'm getting greedy. )

Brian

[BootsC5]

FYI, I have begun development.

[zimmer62]

If HS could read a google calendar, whether it's today's events or events 30 days from now, that would be a great start for my needs. I don't need any type of html front end for this (unless I'm missing the obvious) - if I'm going to get on a computer to see my calendar, I'll just get on Google Calendar. Maybe down the road I could see how it might be nice to be able to add events via HS, but for now as I said, just having HS be able to read my calendar would be a great. If this plugin came with the ability to read multiple accounts and/or subscribed calendars, that would be even better. (I know, now I'm getting greedy. )

Brian

Reading stuff from the calendars would be pretty cool. If my house knew something like today was a holiday or I had the day off of work, basically a calendar item called (Holiday, or "Day-Off") homeseer could pick up on that and not turn on my lights at 7am

FYI, I have begun development.

Keep us informed, I think a few us here would be happy to help contribute ideas, testing, and maybe even help code some of it. I tried to start this a long time ago but just didn't have the momentum moving in a direction where my limited time was much use.

[BootsC5]

So far, triggers that come to mind:

Event added/deleted
Event reminder
Event happening

I'm adding a scripting interface to do some things like event creation/deletion/etc.

I know, personally, I would like to try to teach the system that the work day is a holiday or that I am taking a day off and react accordingly.

I have not looked at any of the other cal products so I am flying blind when it comes to parity.

[RAM]

Right now I use Outlook and the pjcOutook plugin to populate a couple of device strings with what's happening today and tomorrow. From there I check those device strings and do stuff like turn on lights and up the heat earlier if the wife is working.
I'd be happy to just get this capability. What I have works fine, but I'd like to have a calendar that the kids can look at since is seems like they're always asking what's on the wife's and my calendar. With a Google calendar they could just check on-line.

[Czechmarty]

The online portion is what excites me. Consider I'm using 2-3 different computers and my wife another two, it is hard to synchronize everything into outlook. That is why I soooo want this Google Calendar to get integrated to HS.
Please keep us posted and count me in for testing!
Cheers
Marty

[Bill Brower]

I was using the Google Sync with pjcOutlook. The rub was you can't do too much with the categories when it translates in and out of the Google calendar.

[zimmer62]

I was using the Google Sync with pjcOutlook. The rub was you can't do too much with the categories when it translates in and out of the Google calendar.

That's interesting. I've always just created another calendar in google when I need to group events. Seems like google cal doesn't support categories? That's annoying.

At least it lets you search really quickly, don't think the search will return a calendar view though (only a list view)

[BootsC5]

From looking through the dev docs, GC does not have "categories". But there are a couple ways around that.

One of my goals in this was to replace the Days_Till script that I use to announce some items coming up. These events I don't want to handle in a special way. So I need some sort of category system.

There are two ways to have "categories":

1) Each calendar event has a user data section, so I could encode that information there. The down side would be that the only way to modify this data would be through the plugin.

2) The other would be to tag or mark up the event title. This could be edited anywhere, searchable, but could be a little unsightly. I am thinking something like this:

The End of Hurricane Season [daystill]
Bob's Birthday [birthday]
Vacation [vacation]

[zimmer62]

From looking through the dev docs, GC does not have "categories". But there are a couple ways around that.

One of my goals in this was to replace the Days_Till script that I use to announce some items coming up. These events I don't want to handle in a special way. So I need some sort of category system.

There are two ways to have "categories":

1) Each calendar event has a user data section, so I could encode that information there. The down side would be that the only way to modify this data would be through the plugin.

2) The other would be to tag or mark up the event title. This could be edited anywhere, searchable, but could be a little unsightly. I am thinking something like this:

The End of Hurricane Season [daystill]
Bob's Birthday [birthday]
Vacation [vacation]

Each entry also has the description where you could have a set of keywords that could be searched for with regular expressions... same concept, but in the description instead of the title.

Actually I'd search either, and allow for multiple

[birthday parameter="Bob's"] [vacation]

[holiday parameter="Christmas"]

[party name="Christmas Party"] [lighting="party"] [music="Holiday"]

[vacation where="In Ohio"] [thermostat="away"]

just some ideas... maybe parameters could be dynamic, and I'd create an event that picks up [lighting [params...]] and send those parameters to a script. Or handle accordingly.

Maybe that would be too much, and be solving a problem that doesn't exist, just seems to me like if I'm going to schedule something in my calendar it would be easier that way.

Me going to the GYM to work out is in my calendar as a repeating event. It turns off the lights and reminds me to leave for my class there, and sets the themostat. If by chance I'm not feeling well that day, I remove that event from my calendar google asks me just this instance? or all events.. I pick just the one instance, and then my lights/themostat/other won't be affected.

some event's I wouldn't schedule that way, but if I were planning a party I would pick the lighting and music, thermostat, and tell homeseer NOT to talk to me like normal.

[BootsC5]

If it is searchable both in the title and description than either one will work. I am not going to add anything specific for "categories".

I do like your idea of adding some kind of command logic within the event, which I will do nothing to prevent.

The way triggers are shaping up this is the basic flow:

I poll google for events, if it is time for the reminder or start time I put the GC eventid into a device, then call the trigger. Your trigger would then pick up the eventid, via a script, then call back into the plugin for details (title, desc, location, etc) and you can do whatever you want with that information.

In essence you would create your own category/control system via your own markup language. I'm just the information conduit.

[Pierre]

Consider I'm using 2-3 different computers and my wife another two, it is hard to synchronize everything into outlook

Czechmarty: I have found OsaSynch to be very usefull and cheap to synchromize outlooks on different computers, have a look here http://www.vaita.com/.

Cheers

[zimmer62]

I poll google for events, if it is time for the reminder or start time I put the GC eventid into a device, then call the trigger. Your trigger would then pick up the eventid, via a script, then call back into the plugin for details (title, desc, location, etc) and you can do whatever you want with that information.

In essence you would create your own category/control system via your own markup language. I'm just the information conduit.

I like this idea the best. As it makes it a lot less complicated for anyone who might or might not use this. Lets me invent my own tags, and deal with them as needed.

I'd be curious a bit more about the eventid going into "A" device because I see a little bit of conflict there if two or more things are scheduled at the same time. Sometimes I have several all day events, or even two at the same time on my calendar.

When would all day events be triggered?

Would it be possible to ask your plugin current active events?

Dim events As List(Of String)
events=plugin.GetActiveEventsList

For Each e as String in events
.... check event for whatever I'm looking for.
End For

Or better yet...

Will there be an event style object where we can just load it and refer to it's properties, or are you going to have GetName, GetDescription, GetWhatever?

e.g.

Dim event As GoogleEvent
event.Name
event.StartTime
event.Description
event.
.... etc ....

Some other ideas for finding events from your plugin

Public Function GetUpcomingEvents(ByVal t As Timespan) As List(Of GoogleEvent)

Public Function GetPastEvents(ByVal t As Timespan) As List(Of GoogleEvent)

Public Function GetEvents() As List(Of GoogleEvent)

Overloaded:
Public Function GetEvents(ByVal search As String) As List(Of GoogleEvent)

When I look at my google calendar I see a bunch of calendars, some of which I'm subscribing to public calendars, some of which are my friends, and several of my own also which a couple are public. Will this support multiple calendars such as this? e.g. I have a calendar for my ice hockey games that I share publicly, but these events aren't on my personal calendar. However I see them just fine when I bring up google's web interface.