I'm new to Hubitat this month. Not new to electronics and programming in a variety of languages. I have an arduino running HubDuino and monitoring Voltages, Current, Switch settings and triggering lighting and relays and sending messages with Pushover. Using Simple Lighting, Modes, Dashboards and Notifications all working good.
I'm confused by RM 4.0. And I think I need it for my plans. I want to monitor Utility Voltage to see if there is a power outage. I want to monitor my generator voltage to see if it is on or not. I want to be notified via pushover and/or take other actions with devices when the state changes on the Utility or the Generator voltage (above 90V is on and below 90V is off to me). I've tried various uses of the Local Boolean and configurations of the RM 4 and I am not getting it. Once I get logs working on this then pushover then control some relays and switches.
I don't really just want a fix, I want to understand the power in this tool. When I read the support I get confused because there is so much RM 3.0 fading into RM 4.0 discussion. As a new users of Hubitat (Dec 2019) I don't want to learn about RM 3.0 (I think).
Is there a training primer on RM 4.0? Is there a guide with some examples of English desired operation and example RM 4 logic?
Must you use the RM 4.0 application to create rules or can you write the code and upload it somehow? Perhaps the browser based application is giving me some extra level of confusion.
I ask because another member on this forum, neonturbo, told me about a nice project to build a control and monitoring app for Generac generators. The author (Jason Yates) of the project, called GenMon, has done a really great job with the software and supporting documentation. It's almost all python and it runs on a Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, I think it's specific to the Generac controllers.
You are correct and I have read that. The Generac starts out with more interfacing available and even some software on newer models. It still doesn't do what I want to do. My goals are.
Pushover notification me of state changes in Utility and Generator.
If I am home/present I will choose when to shut off and on the generator after it automatically starts (typically I want it off while I'm sleeping).
If I am away and utility power is off, I want it to run some hours out of the day but not all day, perhaps two hours every 12 hours avoiding night hours. This to keep the freezers and heaters working.
I have all of my sensors for voltage and current and relays and switches working great from Arduino and integration via HubDuino is working like a charm, fantastic stuff with HubDuino for us Arduino users.
I'm just having issues with the way the triggers work with conditions in the trigger and further conditions in the actions. The trigger seems to get activated with every read of the Voltage even if it doesn't meet a condition of <90Volts. Perhaps I will dive into some global variables and set that from the voltage and then examine the boolean of the voltage in a separate rule to perform function.
My biggest issue right now is everything is happening every minute regardless of conditions. I can't capture a state change from below 90V to above or above 90V to below.
Thought I'd update on the solution I created for this in case it helps someone else. I created two boolean global variables in the RM (UtilityPower and GeneratorPower) I created two rules for each utility and generator respectively. One rule on each voltage monitor checks for voltage over 90AC and the other for under 90AC. Each of the 4 rules sets the appropriate boolean global variable (e.g. Utility voltage is under 90VAC, Set UtilityPower to False, etc.)
Then i created two more rules that look for a *change on the two respective boolean variables and if the boolean has changed then send a page via Pushover.
Works like a charm. There is lots of capability in the RM, however, I do find the UI difficult to understand and while it is very strong and you can likely do almost anything, the trigger, condition relationship is not intuitive to me.
