Simple Newbie Question ;-)

If I want to turn a light on at lets say 18:00 hrs and turn it off at 22:00 hours (I don’t want to use a delay) can I do this with 1 reactor sensor or do I need 1 sensor for on and 1 sensor for off

sorry, thanks
Nobber

Yes you can use one sensor, and it is quite easy

Under conditions tab:
Name SCENE
AND
Date/Time, Between, 6pm, 10pm

Under Activies tab:
When SCENE is TRUE
Device Action, DeviceName, Turn on or off, 1
When SCENE is FALSE
Device Action, DeviceName, Turn on or off, 0

Good Luck!

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Great thank you

That worked thank you, now i would like the lights to go on 30 minutes after sunset and off at 11:30, there doesnt seem to be an option for 11:30 just sunrise, sunset etc
Sorry if i am being thick

You will want to add another condition to your Time range condition. Making sure that the option at the top is set to AND. Something like this.
image
Using the AND with the time frame, if your sunset isn’t until 7:00 PM, the condition will not become true until everything matched. It has to be 30 minutes AFTER sunset AND between 1800-2200. You may want to look at using the Civil Sunset. For me, this is about 25-30 minutes after the regular Sunset. I have my roller shades set to lower down 15 minutes after sunset. However I plan to move these from PLEG to Reactor and use the Civil Sunset time.

Thanks for the reply, not sure I understand I want the lights to go off at a fixed time ie 11:30 so should I make the between in your example 6pm and 11:30pm ?

Sorry if I’m being thick again, maybe I should go with 2 reactors one to turn on lights at sunset +30 and another to turn off at 11:30, I did used to have 2 schedules in Vera to do this
thanks for your help so far

@3rdStng is correct. Just change the ending time on the second condition to 11:30pm or whatever you want, no problem. You can even make the starting time earlier, like noon, because the sunrise/sunset condition will not let the light come on any earlier.

As a rule, never look at “more ReactorSensors” as a solution. I would assert it is the opposite. Creating more ReactorSensors and spreading logic across them, particularly if they are related and intended to provide one solution to one problem, just always seems like a way to make things more complicated to me. Put it all in one place where you can see it. Different ReactorSensors for completely different jobs? That’s fine. I personally have one RS per room as a rule, and it does everything in that room that needs to be done.

Great thank you so much, all I need now is some help with my secure 2 channel receiver (other post)
and I can stop using PLEG, thanks

So sorry. In your OP you stated 2200, so I kept that in my example. But yes, you are correct.

To add to Rigpapa’s comment, I agree. Less is better. I started out the same way as you did. One Reactor per job/function. But the more I dabbled and played around with Reactor, I really started to see the power it had and how to start combining the logic into 1 sensor. I too am a PLEG user, and paid for that plugin. But my logic within there has always been somewhat simple. But it is basically just a long list of text based strings and functions. The ease that @rigpapa has built into this with the GUI is phenomenal. I’m done adding any new logic into PLEG and will start moving away over a period of time. Me personally, I have one reactor per function, as these functions aren’t specific to one room. But I do have a vReactor room to keep them all in, so I can easily see them all in one place. If you went with the Reactor Sensor per room, you could also put that Sensor in that room with your devices.

No problem I appreciate the help, I’m getting there slowly :wink:

Agreed. I started in a different direction but I realised that it is not the way to proceed. Today I also have one RS per room and it gives better control and is more scalable. In one case I have two, one for lights and one for other stuff in order to keep it readable. I also have some RS to give general states for my home, such as Season, Party, Night etc.

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I’ve got 7
For activities that are limited to a room: 1 per room
Two for ZRC90s (which I expect to phase out in honesty now Alexa is working)
One for activities that take place across the entire house (so things like night shutdown etc etc)

I can still never remember where I need to go to find something!

C

I also use the ZRC90s in each room to give manual control of lights, blinds, sound sources and different modes. The only down side is the change of batteries from time to time. I don’t expect to put Alexa or Google in each room yet ,

Cheaper than a ZRC90!

C

I just wrote a scene controller with messaging/annunciator functionality for the Adafruit PyPortal. I’ll be making a video about it this week. Configurable touch screen… ooohh… ahhh… :smiley:

it also works with home assist… I didn’t say that…

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