Please Add Holiday Scheduling

[leo_charles]

Please add ability to have rules work with holidays.
For example, my kids will be home during Thanksgiving and because of their nap times, it would be great if automations respected certain holidays or calendar specifics.

Thanks.

[aaiyar]

@leo_charles

work with holidays.

Which holidays? US? Canadian? UK? EU? AU?

Would probably be easiest if you used this community integration that lets you use an external integration to define your holidays ....

[RELEASE] Holiday Switcher

This isn't something I'm really going to maintain much but I needed something to do this so I thought I'd share... It allows you to pick holidays from a list and it will turn a switch on on those days. Cobra originally had something similar but since he took his apps down, I threw one together quickly to meet my needs. It will also let you define some custom dates for things that aren't really holidays but you want the switch toggled anyway. https://github.com/dcmeglio/hubitat-holidayswitcher L…

[leo_charles]

US, however I was hoping the HE team would make it integrated.

[aaiyar]

@leo_charles

I was hoping the HE team would make it integrated.

There are at least 2 or 3 community integrations. Not sure what they are not offering that is essential for your needs.

[kewashi]

Why not use Rule Engine and variables or virtual switches? You can code in whatever days you want to trigger the state and then check that state in your automations as a required expression or other logic.

[marktheknife]

In addition to secular/legal holidays, which differ from country to country, there are also religious holidays, which are naturally quite varied.

So which ones should the team build into the firmware? It may seem self-evident to some that federal holidays in the US are the natural choice, but I think @aaiyar makes a valid point that this isn’t necessarily as straightforward a request as it may seem.

Community developers can fill in many niches that built-in offerings do not. And it’s quite simple to add in custom code to one’s hub.

Here’s a page from the hub documentation that explains how:

How to Install Custom Apps

If you’re not sure how to find a specific app to add, just ask here (or you could just try the app @aaiyar already linked to).

[neonturbo]

There is a community based Google calendar integration for Hubitat. That integration might be a good option if you input the school holidays into it. You could poll Google calendar and set a virtual switch which allows or blocks automations from running.

School holidays often are different than legal holidays, E.G. "spring break" and "teacher in-service days", so even if Hubitat decided to do legal holidays that wouldn't help when the kids are home for other reasons like during Christmas break.

[rlithgow1]

You want niche? There is even one for the Sabbath [RELEASE] Sabbath/Holiday Mode Scheduler

[leo_charles]

Thanks for the responses. Google integration seems like the best option for now. I was just hoping for an integrated calendar from HE where perhaps we can also input our own custom scheduling. Just noticed it was missing from various rules I was writing.

When it comes to third party integrations, I’m reluctant to add most because I try to keep things minimal (less confusion and bugs.) some of these integrations are great, but others don’t get maintained, etc. that is unless I find there’s no other alternative. Seems like a calendar integration would rank up there with a core functionality for HE.

[stevenkandres]

I really like the Google integration. The school where my wife works has a published calendar, so I use that to check which days she has school and adjust automations accordingly. My town has a published calendar for garbage pick up, so when pick up day changes due to holidays or other things, my notification to put the garbage out is still always correct. It checks my calendar for vacations, so I don't need to manually set vacation mode on my hub.

I've even heard of a guy using this integration to schedule the outside lights at his home. If there is something your less automation-inclined family would like to set the schedule of, adjusting a calendar event is an easy way to do that.

[vitaliy_kh]

Make it very simple and easy:
Every day is a holiday!

[danabw]

@stevenkandres

I really like the Google integration.

Second this - it has a lot of potential uses, and recently added the capability to send notifcations:

[RELEASE] Google Calendar, Task, and Gmail Search and Gmail Notification Device

Google Calendar, Task, and Gmail Search integrates Hubitat Elevation with your Google Calendar, Tasks, Reminders, and Gmail to automate triggers based on items found matching your search criteria: Optionally toggle a child virtual switch Send Push, SMS, and TTS Notifications Run Rule Machine rule actions Gmail email notification devices can also be created with this application which will allow you to send email notifications directly from your Hubitat Elevation hub using the Google APIs with…

[thebearmay]

If you want something really light you could load a list of holidays into a text file and use this [Release] Daily Reminder to flip a switch or a variable.

[lcw731]

You really should checkout Holiday lighting .

It has US holidays, christian, jewish, and you can add any other holidays you want. It works very well and the developer has been very engaging and responsive to requests as well providing assistance.

[mbishop]

This is not quite the intended use-case for Holiday Lighting, but you could absolutely set it up to flip a virtual switch whenever it's a holiday, and then trigger off that virtual switch in other rules.