I am surprised that the Rule Machine lacks basic timers. For example: say I want to execute a rule Mon-Fri from 09:00-16:00 every 30 minutes within that time frame. I can see no way of doing that without resorting to "trickery".
At present I do it by using a Tasker event on my phone which is driven by exactly that kind of timer, which then sends a web request to IFTTT which turns on a Hubitat Virtual Switch which then triggers the Hubitat Rule that I need (I just need to ensure that the Rule turns off the VS Switch again ready for next time around).
I had thought that as an alternative I could achieve the same thing with an Alexa Routine which also switched the Hubitat Virtual Switch, but Alexa timers can't quite cope with that scenario. But at least Alexa does have timers.
How come the Rule Machine doesn't support timers? Surely they are a basic automation requirement? I've downloaded a couple of Hubitat Timers from the community here, but they didn't cater for this scenario either; I read their groovy code but without knowing how the schedule() function works I can't see how I'd write one for myself. That's what made me think: this is basic stuff, why isn't it already in there?
By the way: I'm a huge fan of Hubitat and have found ways of making pretty much everything work with Hubitat. It's fast, reliable, has strong capability, and is constantly being updated with more good stuff.
