Time bug and feature requests.

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I have been playing with my Vera and like it so far. My first test has been to setup a light to turn on at sunset and then turn off at 11:30pm.

Setup was ok. But the lights kept going on at wonky times. So I then set my location correctly. But things were still wonky. I finally noticed that the time on my Vera was completely wrong on the location tab. It appears that I powered on my Vera without an Internet connection and that it never had the correct time set on it. The box had been on for a good three days, so I am amazed it did not sync its time ever. There is also no way to set the time manually on the Vera from what I can tell. The only way I could get the time correct was to power it off and power it on again. So here are some features requests:

  1. Have the option for Vera to sync it’s time to an external time server once every X hours. I figure once a day would be great to clear up any incorrect time issues like I had.
  2. Have the option to manually set the time on Vera. This would also require an option to turn off time sync at power up to keep my personal time setting. (I’m thinking this would be absolutely required if you have no Internet.)

Thanks. The Vera looks pretty good so far.

2

How did you get your lights to go on at sunset? I’m trying to do that but in the “Timers” section I’m forced to pick a specific time instead.

3

Look in the “Events” section. In the “Event Type” drop down, you should have Sunrise/Sunset (among others)

4

Is it possible to add a time offset for the sunrise/sunset event in a future firmware release? For example, I would like to set an event so that at sunset minus 1 hour certain lights are turned on. For example, if sunset is 5pm, I could then set a minus 1 hour offset, turning the light on at 4pm. Another request would be support for the event to be triggered only on certain days of the week (e.g. separate weekday/weekend events).

5

oh, Thanks. My first thought… was that it would be a timer function and was looking for it there.

6

I found a bug!

I set a “Timer” to turn off my lights at Midnight so I input “12:00am”. This did not work. Then I tried “00:00am” and it did work.

You might want to fix that.

Other than that, and perhaps a few other growing pains… I love this product. ;D

7

I would second the first post. I would like to set some lights to come on before sunrise and go off after sunset.

8

I was thinking about the same thing about offsets with sunset…

So in addition to my first two requests at the top…

  1. Add time offset to “sunset” option. IE: I want the option to turn my lights on 30 minutes before sunset.

Thanks.

9

I personally would like to have some lights come on 1 hour before sunrise, and then go off about 30 min after sunrise. Then back on 30 min before sunset, and go off 4 hours after sunset.

10

Good idea

11

I second that. Good Idea! :smiley:

12

Regarding the time getting off, I added code to sync the time every 12 hours.

Regarding the 12:00am being wrong, we’ll fix that right away: http://bugs.micasaverde.com/view.php?id=267

Regarding offsets for sunrise/sunset, it’s a bit tricky since plugin modules fire events, which, in the future, can be things like “it’s freezing”, “it’s raining” or even “the freeway is congested”. The plugins are autonomous. So it’s impossible to have the event responder do something x minutes before the event fires; it doesn’t know when the plugin will fire an event.

We can do a special circumvention for sunrise/sunset, though: http://bugs.micasaverde.com/view.php?id=268

13

ok, I undestand that it may be a little bit tricky to add a negative offset to the event “sunset”.
But is it possible to add a delay?
To simulate that someone is at home (to irritate possible burglars) I would like to switch on one light 30 minute AFTER sunset, another light 1 hour AFTER sunset and so on. That means that you have to add a delay after the event “sunset” was fired.