Vacation Lighting Control

Is there any way to create a set of timers with a little bit of randomness in them? Like turn on lights at a random time between 7:00 PM and 8:00 PM and turn them off at a random time between 11:00 PM and Midnight? I want to set some lighting timers for a vacation, but don’t want my lights to turn on and off at the same time every day. Only way I’ve been able to figure out how to do it is to create an event for every day while I’m gone that kick off at different times.

create timers based on SUNSET, for example, and give them a certain delta of time (minutes before or after) so the commands to turn on lights are executed at different times every day. Of course, you will need to have your Vera connected to the internet in order to use SUNSET settings that are based on your location (latitude / longitude).

Or,… base the events off a sensor… Temp. sensor based timing event may appear random…

I think I remember seeing some LUUP code to do this somewhere on here…

I’m a newbie and this is exactly the problem I’m wrestling with. I’ve created an “ON” scene and an “OFF” scene for each room. Each scene has seven timers for each day of the week.

The problem I have now is that with 6 lamp controllers, I have a total of 84 timers in 12 scenes that need to be disabled when I return home.

I’m trying devise a “Leave” scene that will arm the sensors and enable all of the lamp timers and a “Return” scene for disarming the sensors, and disabling the timers or the scenes they run.

I can use scene commands to arm/disarm sensor devices, but if I use commands to turn the all of the lamp controllers “ON” so I can control the lamps manually, won’t the timers start turning them off again unless the timer “ENABLE” box is unchecked?

[quote=“kaptdan, post:5, topic:166468”]I’m a newbie and this is exactly the problem I’m wrestling with. I’ve created an “ON” scene and an “OFF” scene for each room. Each scene has seven timers for each day of the week.

The problem I have now is that with 6 lamp controllers, I have a total of 84 timers in 12 scenes that need to be disabled when I return home.

I’m trying devise a “Leave” scene that will arm the sensors and enable all of the lamp timers and a “Return” scene for disarming the sensors, and disabling the timers or the scenes they run.

I can use scene commands to arm/disarm sensor devices, but if I use commands to turn the all of the lamp controllers “ON” so I can control the lamps manually, won’t the timers start turning them off again unless the timer “ENABLE” box is unchecked?[/quote]

Search the forum for “Virtual Devices”. I use a virtual device to signify when I am home versus away. I then use LUA code to suppress the scenes depending on what state I am in.