Is there a way to set up a MeshBot to run at a specific time? For example, if I want it to run at 5:30 AM Monday-Friday and 7am Saturday and Sunday? It seems I can do this through the scenes section of the Vera Mobile application, but in looking at the Ezlogic web interface, I only find options for “before” “after” or “between”, not “exactly at”. Am I just missing that somewhere?
I think you just select “After”.
Does this help page help?
I suppose… according to that page:
- After — means ‘Start after the time you specify and run it until midnight’. For example, ‘After 8pm’ will run from 8.00.01 PM until 11.59.59 PM.
It’s that “run it until midnight” section of that description that gives me pause. I don’t want to “run until midnight”, I want to “run once at a specific time”
In the Vera mobile scene editor, this is accomplished by choosing “Date and time”–>“Daily/weekly/monthly” (depending on which type of repetition you want - for my example that would be weekly) -->“At a time of day”, making it easy to specify my example.
So assuming that “After” is essentially equivalent to “At a time of day”, then I guess to do my example, I’d then need to combine that with “days of the week” to achieve the same result. Fair enough, if not very intuitive 
Yes you have to combine using an AND trigger “Days of the Week” AND “Custom Time”.
However last time I tried to create a trigger like that, it didn’t trigger the rule at the days / time I specified which I think was a bug.
Just try it now as a test, have some action run at 7:05pm tonight or what ever and select Mon, Tue, Wed or whatever.
See if your action is actually run or not ?
Yeah, test action created. We’ll see if it runs in about an hour - and what happens after that!
Actually, I think that will work, for this particular case. But what happens when combined with another criteria - such as “light off” - that could change during the “After” period? For example, say I want to run the scene at 6:30am if the dining room light is off (basically if no one is up yet at this time, do something, based on the assumption that the dining room light will be turned on when someone gets up). Simple enough to set up:
- After 6:30am
—AND— - Dining room light off
(possible days of the week criteria as well)
So at 6:30am, if the dining room light is off, the scene will run. Good. But now we have a problem. Say, an hour later, someone turns on the dining room light for a few minutes, then turns it off. Now the scene will run again, since it is after 6:30am and the dining room light has been turned off. In fact, every time the dining room light is turned off after 6:30 am will trigger the scene.
As such, “after” is really not equivalent to “at this time”.
I guess I can work around that problem by using a “Between” option with a range of 1 minute (or whatever the smallest interval is), but that’s at least as unintuitive as “After”
You are right, that could have been done with the help of constraints which many users are used to. That way the light would be a constraint and it wouldnt cause the meshbot to trigger
The same concept we are wokring on and will provide soon. For now you can use other ways such as between as you suggested.
So how would that work better with constraints? The light would be a constraint, as you mentioned. Ok, so 6:30am, the light is on, so the constraint keeps the scene from running. Good. But say it is then 7am, and the light turns off, so the constraint logic is met to allow running. It is also after 6:30am, so that is true as well. Don’t we have the same problem? The scene will then run at 7:00am if the light is turned off at that time?
The goal here is to run once, and only once, at a specific time, perhaps with additional constraints/criteria, like you can already do through the Vera mobile app.
Ok, I’ll plan on that, thanks. For what it’s worth, the Vera mobile app method is intuitive and functional, and should be replicated in Ezlogic rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
we have some ideas, we will be bringing to EZLogic that will make life easy…stay tuned…
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