Dynamic Cron Strings in Rules?

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

Let’s say you want the pump to come on two hours after dawn. Using the Astro binding you can create a Switch that will receive an ON command 2 hours after the sun comes up at your location. See

Automation/Orchestration Design Patterns

RLK back with another Design Pattern to add to the list. Time Of Day Triggers The Problem: Many of us have rules that we want to only execute or behave differently during certain time periods of the day. As our rules grow there is the potential that more and more parts of the system will need to have this capability (e.g. lighting, HVAC, blinds, etc). Sometimes the times that define a period are fixed (e.g. 11pm) and others they are based on celestial events (e.g. sunset). This can result in …

There is an Alarm Clock example (search the forum) that lets you schedule a time in the sitemap and have a rule trigger at that time. It is complicated and a little hacky but it appears to work.

There might be some other type of event that you can use to determine when to start the pump, a motion sensor, presence detection, etc.

Personally I separate the day into a set of time periods (Morning, Day, Evening, Night) which are driven either by set times (e.g. Night starts at 11:00 pm) or astronomical events (e.g. Evening starts 90 minutes before sunset). Then I drive my rules based on those time periods. So I would probably add a Midmorning time period that starts 120 minutes after sunrise and ends at noon. My rule would trigger when TimeOfDay changes to “Midmorning” where I would check the temp and run the pump or set a flag. I’d have another rule that triggers when TimeOfDay changes to “Day” and if the flag wasn’t set run the pump.

I set up my automation this way to increase the simplicity of my environment. Rather than separately keeping track of all sorts of different timers and time periods for different things I separated all that into its own independent module and drive schedules by changing a TimeOfDay Item.