Need input on scheduling.

[123]

A core feature of any HA program is its ability to control devices according to a schedule. Ideally, you want a lot of flexibility in defining when something should occur.

My current HA program (Premise) displays scheduled tasks in an "Outlook-style" view. Very handy but what I dislike is its limited selection of "date criteria". For example, you can specify a task to run Daily, on WeekDays, or on WeekEnds but you can forget about:

• Only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
• In August and September.
• In Autumn and Spring.
• If Sunrise is later than 6:30 AM.

Most HA programs will let you use scripting to gain complete control over scheduling. Scripting lets you create arcane schedules like "on every second Easter unless it's a leap year".

What I'd like to know is what sort of "date flexibility" is provided by other HA programs (without using scripting). I can download the 30-day trial versions of everything out there and discover it for myself ... or poll my fellow Cocooners to share their knowledge. h34r:

I've extended Premise's "date criteria" so that now I can specify the following (without resorting to scripting):

• Seasons, Months, Weekdays
• Sunrise/Sunset Threshold

Plus its existing parameters:

• One-Shot/Daily/WeekDays/Weekends/Weekly
• StartTime/EndTime
• SunRise +/- Offset
• SunSet +/- Offset
• Repeat n times or until a specified date

I'd appreciate hearing about other useful date criteria found in your HA software.

 

[nightwalker]

A core feature of any HA program is its ability to control devices according to a schedule. Ideally, you want a lot of flexibility in defining when something should occur.

My current HA program (Premise) displays scheduled tasks in an "Outlook-style" view. Very handy but what I dislike is its limited selection of "date criteria". For example, you can specify a task to run Daily, on WeekDays, or on WeekEnds but you can forget about:

• Only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
• In August and September.
• In Autumn and Spring.
• If Sunrise is later than 6:30 AM.

Most HA programs will let you use scripting to gain complete control over scheduling. Scripting lets you create arcane schedules like "on every second Easter unless it's a leap year".

What I'd like to know is what sort of "date flexibility" is provided by other HA programs (without using scripting). I can download the 30-day trial versions of everything out there and discover it for myself ... or poll my fellow Cocooners to share their knowledge. h34r:

I've extended Premise's "date criteria" so that now I can specify the following (without resorting to scripting):

• Seasons, Months, Weekdays
• Sunrise/Sunset Threshold

Plus its existing parameters:

• One-Shot/Daily/WeekDays/Weekends/Weekly
• StartTime/EndTime
• SunRise +/- Offset
• SunSet +/- Offset
• Repeat n times or until a specified date

I'd appreciate hearing about other useful date criteria found in your HA software.

I'm using HS and out of the box it comes pretty darn close to everything you want. With the addition of a couple of very inexpensive plugins you can get it all, plus more.

 

[123]

I'm using HS and out of the box it comes pretty darn close to everything you want. ..

Could you elaborate? Thanks.

 

[nightwalker]

Well lets see there are event triggers for

yes - Seasons, Months, Weekdays
yes - Sunrise/Sunset Threshold Plus its existing parameters:
yes - One-Shot/Daily/WeekDays/Weekends/Weekly
yes - StartTime/EndTime
yes - SunRise +/- Offset
yes - SunSet +/- Offset
can be done but may take two events - Repeat n times or until a specified date

As well as others. days or weeks left in the week or year, the numeric day of the year, Weekdays or Weekend Days between two dates. Enough that I've forgotten several i'm sure. I also use two plugins from blade to add fuctionallity to that. Reminders and Alarms. They sort of work together to make the alarm process painless allowed alarms to be overridden in case of holidays, or just a day off. Again to numberous to go into. Might be worth a look, it all has a 30 day trial.

 

[123]

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it.

Numeric Day of Year is an interesting one. I'm not sure I have an immediate need for that but it's something I hadn't considered. Most of my schedules are based on phases of the day (like turning the kitchen lights on only if sunrise is later than 6:00 AM) or of the year (pool runs longer in July and August as opposed to June and September ... and that's about it for pool season in Montreal). Schedules may also be influenced by the state of a global variable, like the M1's arming state.

I'm sure HomeSeer provides extensive control over scheduling ... and I'd like to hear more about them so I can steal the features I like best. h34r:

 

[nightwalker]

hehe, well one of my favorites comes from a plugin. It lets me set the holidays not only for an announcment or two but it also disables my and the whole family's normal alarms for that day as well. It sure keeps me from having to remember that there is a holiday coming and and manually disabling everyones alarm for the day and then going back to turn it all back on after the holiday.

 

[123]

.. one of my favorites comes from a plugin. It lets me set the holidays not only for an announcment or two but it also disables my and the whole family's normal alarms for that day as well....

I'm not familiar with HomeSeer's lingo so I downloaded a trial version of HS 2.2. You used the terms "alarm" and "announcement". Are these the equivalent of "Event" and "Reminder" (i.e. VRemind)? So the plugin selectively disables Events and Reminders based on a supplied list of dates? Yeah, I'll definitely steal that one.

 

[mustangcoupe]

I'd say you are also missing

• X time +/- offset
• x time +/- random offset (would be useful for turning lights on when your not home making the house look lived in and not on a timer)

 

[123]

Thanks for that! But you'll have to explain the way offset is used. I understand the concept of "random offset" (i.e. task starts at 5:00 PM plus or minus zero to ten minutes) but "offset" alone has me stumped. Do you mean it'll select either plus or minus the offset? So "3:00 PM +/- 6 minutes" would become either 2:54 PM or 3:06 PM?

 

[nightwalker]

.. one of my favorites comes from a plugin. It lets me set the holidays not only for an announcment or two but it also disables my and the whole family's normal alarms for that day as well....

I'm not familiar with HomeSeer's lingo so I downloaded a trial version of HS 2.2. You used the terms "alarm" and "announcement". Are these the equivalent of "Event" and "Reminder" (i.e. VRemind)? So the plugin selectively disables Events and Reminders based on a supplied list of dates? Yeah, I'll definitely steal that one.

I use two plug-ins written by Blade, BLAlarm and BLReminders to expand the scheduling ability of HS that gives me the functionally i was looking for with the families alarm scheduling. In HS a reminder could be an event, an event is anything that is triggered from an external stimulus, be it a time or device or temperature, whatever. The Vremind is something else entirely, that's more a feature for VR. I could certainly setup events to cover all my reminders but the plug-in makes it far simpler to do and the Alarm plug-in allows easy manipulation of schedules without having to redo an alarm simply because you have a day or or want to get up at a different time one or more days.

 

[123]

OK, my wife and I had a good laugh over the "Phase of the Moon" scheduling feature I saw in HS. I said it was needed by werewolves and she said its for those who believe moon phases influence conception and labour! Who knew HA apps were useful for paranormal and non-traditional medical purposes? Good gosh, you certainly do learn something new here every day! h34r:

... also handy for knowing when to plant or harvest crops!

 

[roussell]

You may also want to have a look at HouseBot. While out of the box it doesn't give you moon phase h34r:, I have found it to meet all of my timing needs through the years.

The attachments show the system time device and it's associated properties, and an example of a task that uses the system time device. Tasks in HB are point-and-click created. They look like a script, but are done with no typing. Of course, you can script whatever you need, but you mentioned a no scripting desire.

HB will also give you a nice customizable frontend. I attached a couple shots from the HB frontend (called a SWremote) on my ATT 8525 phone. Its a WMplayer theme that I've been playing with, not complete but enough to give you an idea. HB supports Insteon, zwave, and of course X10 and the best part, it's only $69.00.

Terry

EDIT: Typos

 

[123]

... look at HouseBot...

I'm familiar with HouseBot; I was "HB Guy" in the Housebot forum and evaluated it extensively in 2006. I had asked ScottBot to create a VBScript section where I posted the ITunes and News examples, and explored the possibility of converting SWRemotes into web pages. Ultimately, I abandoned HouseBot, albeit reluctantly.

HouseBot is a great HA program that offer tremendous value for the money; kudos to ScottBot for his excellent work. I loved the Software Remotes feature but needed a UI for other platforms. HouseBot's web-support is extremely limited when compared to what its SWremotes can do. FWIW, had the marriage between HouseBot and Meedio succeeded, it would've been more like Premise. Both applications use the same scripting engine (VBScript) and expose their data as objects with properties. Richard Naninck's ELK M1 script was one of the many sources I reviewed before writing an M1 driver for Premise.

Many thanks for the screenscrapes; it reminded me to include support for twilight (a.k.a Civil Sunrise/Sunset).

 

[AHL]

As the author of AHL, I too have always been surprised by the lack of event scheduling criteria in, or not in, as the case might be, in many of the other HA applications, as I believe that this also lies at the very heart or core of an HA application and would seem to be a necessary first step!

From the very beginning Adaptive Home Logic has always been very flexible in this (built-in) area, without the need for any additional plug-ins or scripting. For example an event can be scheduled to fire, or only be permitted to fire, to any combination of the following scheduling conditions (as well as many other things):-

Season
Month
Day of Month
Day (or Days) of week (Weekday / Weekend)
Before, On or after a date
Between Dates
First, second, third, forth or last ‘Day-of-week’ in month
Part of day (Morning, afternoon, etc.)
Before, on, between and after a time
Hour of Day
Minute of Hour
Minute in every 10 minutes
Second of minute
Second in every 10 seconds
Up to 1/10th of a second resolution
First Light
Sunrise
Sunset
After Twilight
With + / - / or +- (Random) offset
Event Duration and Repeat timers

Of course it’s also possible to use scripting for even more complicated scenarios, where the program exposes other data as well, such as:-

Julian Date
Day light saving time
Leap Year
Day number in year
Days left in year
Week Number

The imminent Vista release builds on this, and includes the Moon’s age, phase, rise & set times, Easter day calculations, etc.

Also because of the way the program works, it is very easier to implement interesting alarms and announcements, with its many sound effects together with its flexible and prioritised speech system.

 

[123]

AHL, thank you for the comprehensive list. That's an impressive degree of control! You've provided several good examples I'd like to implement including moon rise/set and day period.