I am attempting to figure out how to alternate a lighting schedule for my wife. I have lights that come on when I get up in the morning to go to the gym. She personally doesn't want the lights on the days she gets up to go to the gym. My issues is that we have an alternating schedule for when we go to the gym.
Our schedule: Mon, Weds, Fri. My wife will go for these days, and I will go Tues & Thurs. The following week we switch schedule and now I will go Mon, Weds, Friday and she will go Tues and Thursday.
Week 1 - Mon, Weds, Friday - ON
Week 1 - Tues, Thurs - OFF
Week 2 - Mon, Weds, Friday - OFF
Week 2 - Tues, Thurs - ON
Week 3 - Mon, Weds, Friday - ON
Week 3 - Tues, Thurs - OFF
Week 4 - Mon, Weds, Friday - OFF
Week 4 - Tues, Thurs - ON
How do I make a schedule in RM to execute this type of scheduled lighting?
This is possible, but what's missing is how you want the lights to turn on or off in the first place: motion sensor, contact sensor, just time of day, or what. You probably don't even need Ruled Machine to make that work, and other apps may be simpler to set up, but if you already have an automation that gets you part way there, someone can probably suggest an easy modification.
In that case, there are a few ways you can do it, and which is best might depend on your existing set up. But a fairly straightfoward one would be under Means to Activate Lights > Activate Lights Options, where under Limit activation under these conditions, you could select the days of the week where you don't want them to turn on.
It would then only work on those days set in RL rule, it still wouldn't alternate for the weekly cycle.
I think I figured it out. Looks terrible, but I believe this will work out. I used a boolean variable and a ton of conditions to limit it and schedule it. Resets the boolean at the end of the week on it's final execution in the schedule. I am sure I could've simplified this with ELSE statements, instead of seperate IF's.
What I was going to suggest in that case was something similar but add a variable or virtual switch to them mix. Then, use a rule to set that switch or variable to the opposite state every other week. (A periodic trigger can do that, plus, of course, the correct action for your device.) You can continue to use these as activation limitation options in RL. It may be easiest to have two instances.
But it looks like your rule might do something similar in the end, so if that works, it works!
If I'm reading it right, what you have is actually just an alternating setting for each day, perhaps with some smarts to handle the weekend. EDIT - Now that I read a little more closely, that is actually in the title
If you map out an entire two week period you end up with
Mon - ON
Tue - OFF
Wed - ON
Thu - OFF
Fri - ON
Sat - OFF
Sun - ON
Mon - OFF
Tue - ON
etc
You could just have a switch that you toggle once a day and reference that in your RL setup.
In RM you could use the rule's Private Boolean like this
Trigger Events
When time is 6:00 AM
Actions to Run
IF (Day in [Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday] AND Private Boolean is true) THEN
On: Light
END-IF
IF (Private Boolean is true) THEN
Set Private Boolean False
ELSE
Set Private Boolean True
END-IF
You want the rule to run over the weekend to toggle the PB to keep the sequence going but take no action on the light. You could also use a virtual switch instead of the PB and just use the toggle action for the same result.
Thinking about this more, you don't need it to run over the weekend so the rule can be simplified
Required Expression
Day in [Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday]
Trigger Events
When time is 6:00 AM
Actions to Run
IF (Private Boolean is true) THEN
On: Light
Set Private Boolean False
ELSE
Set Private Boolean True
END-IF
