I want to know that our automatic generator has kicked on if the power goes out and we're away from home, so I set up a Ring extender to tell me that the power has gone out and when it has been restored, using pushover. Works well unless the power goes on and off quickly before it goes out, which can confuse the Ring extender. So, I put a battery-powered Homeseer Z-wave sensor that reports temperature inside the generator housing and set up a rule in Rule Manager that compares that temperature to the ambient temperature as reported via Weather Underground. If the difference is 20 degrees or more I get a notification via Pushover. That also works well, but a little too well, as it reports every time the temperature of the sensor changes and is still 20 degrees or more above ambient. I got so many notifications in the first 15 minutes of a recent outage that I had to pause the rule. So... How do I limit this, so that I get a notification no more than a couple of times after this +20 degree difference is reached? Thanks in advance for help.
What I did in a similar conundrum is set up a hub variable called "PhotosTooHumid" and when the value of the humidity sensor first went above the threshold it sets it to true via a rule. In fact it sets it to true every time but the event of the variable changing only happens the once. Then you only get notified the first time it gets set to true if your rule is monitoring the variable rather than the device. When it's below the threshold by a certain amount set it to false. Leave a slight difference between threshold for off and on, then it won't bounce while changing
It would be worth posting a screenshot of the rule you have set up. Can you use a private boolean. The private boolean being true as the required expression in RM. Once the rule triggers, the first action sets the private boolean false. Once your required actions have been carried out (notifications sent and I assume a wait until the temperature difference is back within limits), set the private boolean back to true again. That should stop the rule re-triggering with every periodic report from your temperature sensor.
My way actually requires two separate rules at the moment but I am gonna take a look and see if I can combine them.
Later: Hopefully this works...
Thanks for the ideas and advice. I think the approach suggested by @Inge_Jones will work well for me.
I also propose that if Rule Manager had some way to limit actions once a threshold had been reached and a value remained above/below that threshold, it would be a handy thing. Many use cases for HE are likely temperature or humidity driven, so that sort of capability would likely be frequently used. I think Homeseer has such a thing, but it's been too long since I used it so can't remember specifically. Anyway, off to change some rules. Thanks for the ideas.
So here's what I did:
- Created a virtual switch (which acts like a variable, but I understand virtual devices better than variables, so...)
- Created a rule with a condition of "If Temperature Changes", for the sensor I put in the generator housing
- I use the great Weather Underground (Wunderground) driver from @dJOS to monitor my weather station, so HE always knows the outdoor temperature. So, for the rule actions, I did this:
IF (Temperature of Generator Housing is >= Weather Underground+20.0) THEN
On: Gen Running Temp V Switch (Command only switches that are off)
ELSE
Off: Gen Running Temp V Switch (Command only switches that are on)
- Finally, I created a rule to notify me when the virtual switch had turned on (generator running) and another to notify me when it turns off (generator housing has cooled off).
We had an outage this morning (rural Maine, so we get them rather often) and it worked great. I received one notification that the generator was running, and another when it turned off. Another problem solved - Thanks for the ideas that helped me get there.
