Minimum Plant Lights On

ronv42 · February 22, 2021, 11:37am

Starting seeds indoor and keeping the plants "cycle" to the sunrise and sunset along with minimum on rules are escaping me with rule machine.

On my Stargate I used to be able to calculate the number of minutes of daylight and if it was less that 9 hours then I would run the lights for 9 hours. If the number of minutes of daylight exceeded 9 hours I would shut the lights down at sunset.

Looking for a way in Rule Machine to calculate the minutes of daylight so I can build off conditions for the plant lights.

Any ideas?

bjcowles · February 22, 2021, 12:53pm

Do you have anything else in your setup that is triggered by sunset and can be used to test against? For instance, I have a mode change at sunset which I could use after nine hours to see if sunset had already occurred. If it hasn't then I could wait until it does. Doing something like this avoids having to bring in another external API or/and doing crazy variable math that I have never been comfortable with.
Just an idea.

ronv42 · February 22, 2021, 12:56pm

Oh that is a great idea...the delay is the 9 hour timer and if it's not sunset yet leave the lights on. Doh! I have a very good time of daylight rules:

ronv42 · February 23, 2021, 1:11pm

Dry run of plant lights worked, here are my rules. I also added a safety rule to my "Sleep" mode being set. If the plant lights are still on when sleep triggers I turn them off. This comes in handy when I turn the lights on manually outside of the rule: