How to create a timer without creating a Scene? Need an option for this

Community Playground General Discussions
1

There needs to be an option to create a Timer without creating a scene. Also see automatically turning lights on at sunset and turning off at sunrise:

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=6350.0

I’m bit confused with couple of options in the scene tab.

  1. How do I have multiple commands for a scene?
  2. Where is the option to add a new command to scene?
2

I am not quite sure what you want to do.

In any scene, you can set any or all devices in your network. Just select a different room. The commands for the other room will remain. You can check as many devices as you want in the scene. (There is no new command option.)

What you cannot do with a scene is have it do two different things - like turn lights on and turn lights off. For that you need two scenes (unless you want to turn lights off after a set on time).

To turn lights on at sunset, create a scene with a timer that is triggered at sunset. In the commands area, set as many lights to on as you want.

To turn lights off at sunrise, create another scene.

3

Thanks for the input wscannell. That is exactly what I thought how Vera works as well.

The way I see it, an Auto timer is not a scene. A scene should be capable of doing things with little more sophistication, it appears the only way it could be accomplished with Vera is creating two scenes - Logically it wont make any sense to create a scene were someone just want to turn the lights on at sunset - would it? (what about turning them off).

Perhaps, it would be nice if there is a separate Tab for Timers (It is still good to have timers in scene), but timers just for the sake of acting as timers and nothing to do with scenes.

4

In Vera, a scene is just a description of what to do when one or more events occur.

These events are things like light switches being activated, doors being opened, a timer (time of day) occurring etc. As a specialist type of timer event, we have Sunset and Sunrise.

In effect, a scene is a set of inputs/triggers that cause a specific set of outputs/actions to occur.

Ie. When event do actions

5

If a scene allowed one to turn off lights that were turned on, this would make it more difficult to turn some lights off at one time (say bedtime) and other lights off at sunrise. As @guessed said, the scene if just a way to trigger one set of commands on an event(s) or timer(s).

In fact, there are devices that are not necessarily on/off devices, so it is less clear what would be done in an off scene. This would include such devices as thermostats and sensors (arm/bypass).

Although z-wave remotes normally have an “off” mode for scenes, this is an extension to the z-wave spec. If you have a GE Advanced remote or similar, you can get it to turn lights off with the off side of the scene button. Do this by including the remote, then program the scenes in Vera, then include the remote again. Vera will tell the remote what devices to turn on. If they are on/off devices, the remote will then be able to turn them off.