I've switched from the " Virtual Thermostat Manager by Eliot Stocker" to the "Advanced vThermostat Manager by Nelson Clark". I found the "vThermostat" to work better with my Dashboards.
Anyway, when I woke up this AM, I wanted to know how many times overnight that the vThermostat turned on the heater. Thought I'd peek at the Event page for the plug it turns on/off.
Turns out, it is sending a "off" every minute to the heater, even though - of course - it's already off. Making it difficult to see when it really turned on/off. The original on and final off are pages and pages back in the "event history".
The "events" show that it definitely the vThermostat app that is sending the off every minute. "VIR - Thermostat Bedroom" below is created by vThermostat.
I guess I get the "safety" aspect of it -- so if that's the reason, I'll create a "tracking virtual switch" just so I have a place to go and look at the status history.
This is a functionality of the original code that will most likely disappear in the next version, it will verify that the plug(s) are off and turn them off only if they were turned back on. It's more of a safety thing to be sure we don't get a runaway plug and burn down the house.
If I can make a recommendation -- there may be people who want that behavior (keep turning it off). There may be other people that want the check "turn off only if on".
Eg example: For me, it's an oil heater (one of those little space heaters). It's safe as it has it's own thermostat, to be left on. But others, might have a propane heater, and it may not be so safe to leave on.
If that could be an option set in the device driver page, that'd be cool.
@nclark -- been thinking about this. The idea of an "option" to not turn off the plug over and over.
A refined suggestion: Make it a field where
0 = infinite (as it is today) turn on/off every 1 minute
Otherwise, it's the number of times (1, 10, 15 etc) that someone wants it to re-try turning it on/off - every minute as it is today.
Normally folks would choose 0 or 1 -- but I can see the use-case (me!) where I'd compromise and have it, for safety, try - say - 10 times to turn off. JIC
I was thinking more in the line of having every minute as it is now but also every x minutes (max 30 minutes or something) as an option keeping the safety aspect.
