[quote=“vinceblack, post:80, topic:170481”][quote=“futzle, post:79, topic:170481”]vinceblack, do an experiment for me. While the timer is counting, press its Force button. Does the scene fire?
Is your timer muted or unmuted?[/quote]
futzle, Thanks for quick response.
When I press force nothing happens either. I have tried muted as well unmuted.[/quote]
Ok, After stepping away from it and coming back figured out what I did incorrectly. The third step for Turned Light Off. I did not set the timer to cancel only set the light to off. After making that change everything works great. Again thanks for the great plugin.
Ugh! So it appears I lied. After making the change on the third step and when I click cancel it will fire off the scene and turn the light off, but if I let the timer expire nothing happens. Again appreciate your help.
vinceblack, I’m afraid that you’ve lost me. I don’t know which instructions you are specifically following; a pointer would help. (Edit: is it this one?) Also screenshots of the scenes’ configuration screens (particularly the Triggers and Advanced tabs, and the details of the trigger). The more you can show me what you’ve done, the more likely I can see your mistake.
The instructions are the one you advised on setting up plugin for lights. Attached are the screen shots for setting up scene. Again thanks for the assistance.
Thanks for the screen captures. None of the scenes match the instructions given in the howto topic.
Your “Light On” scene also mutes the timer. It should not affect the timer’s mute status at all. To fix: click the tiny red X while you are editing the scene’s actions, so that neither the Mute or Unmute buttons are lit. Your “Light On” scene also tries to turn on the same light that triggers it, which is pointless but probably harmless.
Your “Light Off” scene also mutes the timer. Same fix. It also tries to turn off the same light that triggers it, which is again pointless but probably harmless.
Your “Turned Light Off” scene has the wrong trigger. Yours has “Timer cancelled while not muted”. The instructions say to use “Timer completes while not muted”. Delete the wrong trigger and add the right one. Also this scene mutes the timer like your previous scenes do. Finally, this scene tries to cancel the timer which has just completed, which is pointless but probably harmless.
I recommend that you delete all the scenes and start again. Don’t try to put triggers (scene inputs) into the actions (scene outputs).
Thanks for the screen captures. None of the scenes match the instructions given in the howto topic.
Your “Light On” scene also mutes the timer. It should not affect the timer’s mute status at all. To fix: click the tiny red X while you are editing the scene’s actions, so that neither the Mute or Unmute buttons are lit. Your “Light On” scene also tries to turn on the same light that triggers it, which is pointless but probably harmless.
Your “Light Off” scene also mutes the timer. Same fix. It also tries to turn off the same light that triggers it, which is again pointless but probably harmless.
Your “Turned Light Off” scene has the wrong trigger. Yours has “Timer cancelled while not muted”. The instructions say to use “Timer completes while not muted”. Delete the wrong trigger and add the right one. Also this scene mutes the timer like your previous scenes do. Finally, this scene tries to cancel the timer which has just completed, which is pointless but probably harmless.
I recommend that you delete all the scenes and start again. Don’t try to put triggers (scene inputs) into the actions (scene outputs).[/quote]
Sorry for late response back. Not sure why I was trying to turn light on and off that the trigger was doing, corrected the settings. It def. helped to have second eyes, I had fat fingered the settings once I changed timer cancel to timer completed everything worked great. Again thanks for the help and plugin.
I currently have multiple timers, which have associated scenes that are triggered (when “unmuted”).
For each timer, I have a 2nd scene that only restarts the times (regardless of mute status).
If there was an auto restart option, I could eliminate the 2nd scene.
svanni, I will add that request to the pile of possible future enhancements. This plugin is a fair way down the list of things needing my attention, so keep your workaround for the moment.
[quote=“futzle, post:3, topic:170481”]In this example, imagine that you have a light that you want to turn off five minutes after it is turned on. If the light is turned off manually before 5 minutes, do nothing.
Create a Countdown Timer. Rename it Five minute timer. Go to the configuration tab and change the Duration to 300 seconds.
Create a scene. Rename it Light goes on. Edit the scene, setting a trigger for the light device: A device is turned on or off > Device is turned on. Make the scene activate the Start button on the Five Minute Timer.
Create a second scene. Rename it Light goes off. Edit the scene, setting a trigger for the light device: A device is turned on or off > Device is turned off. Make the scene activate the Cancel button on the Five Minute Timer.
Create a third scene. Rename it Turn light off. Edit the scene, setting a trigger for the Five Minute Timer: Timer completes while not muted. Make the scene activate the Off button on the light device.
Mute the timer to temporarily override the automatic turning off of the light.[/quote]
Great app. JUST TO SHARE YOU A STORY. 5-MINUTE TIMER: My wife a lot of times forgets to turn garage lights off. I told her not to worry about it anymore. Told her to intentionally leave lights on and there you go; after 5 minutes lights are off-she was very impressed. One night she was carrying lots of groceries from costco to put them in the freezer which is in the garage. She was still carrying grocery stuff with both hands when the lights turn off. The garage is long about 35 ft. And of course she yelled because she cannot see.
After the above incident, I created the 45-SECOND TIMER: Now the problem got worse because every time we trigger the Z1R000 motion sensor, both the 5-MINUTE TIMER and the 45-SECOND TIMER start counting down simultaneously; and of course the winner is the 45-second timer and the light goes off after 45 seconds. On top of that it won’t restart because the Z1R000 is still in “tripped” state. I don’t know how to restore it in “not tripped” state immediately (I am not too good with lua code).
TEMPORARILY, i disabled the 45-second timer and increased the 5 to 10-minute timer until I figured out a solution either by myself or with the help from this community forum. Thanks this is a very good app ONE LAST NOTE: the Day or Night plugin is simpler to use than the Heliotrope. The Countdown Timer is much simpler to use than the PLEG - just my 2 cents.
For those of you who are using this to get notified in case you leave the garage door open, how long do you guys have your timer set at? I have mine set at 3 minutes but wanted to do a quick survey. Thanks!
That’s a good idea. As I mentioned, one of my timers is 10 hours, so that’s a heap of log entries.[/quote]
Hello futzle
Thank you from my side for this useful plugin. Comes in real handy when defining scenes and events that sort of need to wait.
Some of my timers are set up to count down from 24 hours and hence fill the log with quite a bit of ‘clutter’.
I therefore also strongly support your idea of a configurable ‘level of precision’.
In this example there were 26 entries for one second. I have seen over 30 entries though and it looks like the longer the Lua engine is running the more entries per second are written.
After a reload of the Lua engine everything is back to normal - but only for a while. My LuaUPnP logs get currently switched every 10 minutes. I had an unexpected system reboot this afternoon which I might attribute to the masses of log entries (no hard proof though), maybe some memory leaks or overflow …
I am curious if others that run lengthy timers experience similar problems.
Btw. I’m running a Vera3 with the latest Fw 1.5.622.
new to this thread as i only discovered and installed the plugin today. Nice app- does exactly what i hoped.
My only concern is, having read the previous posts, are there unnecessary overheads as a result of unwanted log-data that may cause other issues? TBH im not sure what my current setup is putting out into the log file. (i never really check)
thanks
I modified the LUA scripts to change the tick rate to once every 10 seconds.
My use cases are mostly to turn lights or fans off after 10-60 minutes, so an extra 9 seconds doesn’t bother me.
For those interested, I downloaded the file L_CountdownTimer1.lua in 3 places.
Each three points where:
return luup.call_delay("tick", 1, "") == 0
I changed that to:
return luup.call_delay("tick", 10, "") == 0
Now the dashboard updates every 10 seconds, and the timers expire close enough to what I want.
Thanks, @PurdueGuy, I changed my lua file and yes, I get less clutter in the log … for a while.
But then, though less messages, I’m back to the same ‘logging issues’ as stated in my previous post.
It would be interesting to see if the # of repeat messages was correlated to the # of times the countdown timer was triggered since the last Vera Restart.