When does each delay timer start in RM 3.0

📐 Rule Machine®
1

I am playing around with rule machine to make a tepmature schedule for my home and it seemed like using the new multiple actions and delays feature would look cleaner than my old true false style rule I currently use for this task.

Any how my question is simple when I set a delay on an action does anyone happen to know if the delay timers all start when the initial rule is triggered or does each delay work from the completion of the last task?

This is the rule I created and the desired effect would be to set the temp at 3:15am to 68 wait 4 hrs and setting the temp to 65 at 7:15am waiting 8.5 hrs turning the heat back up at 3:45 pm and then waiting the final 5.5 hours setting the heat back down at 9:15pm

Rule%20question

would this rule work as intended or would i have to time the delays from the original time of activation?

Thanks for your time and help
Steve

2

Off subject slightly but couldn't Thermostat Sheduler do this for you?

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3

Honestly I had no idea this was a thing lol thank you for pointing me to a simpler solution

I would still however like to know how the delay timers operate for similar situations where a prebuilt tool doesn't exist

4

When your rule is running, if you click on the settings cog for your rule in the app list and then scroll to the bottom, you will see the scheduled jobs.
Do these times equate to your delays. (If they are there of course).

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5

Thank you for that helpful tidbit!

For anyone else that finds this thread. It looks like the delay timers all start from the original time the rule is triggered so my above example would not have worked as intended

6

I thought that was the case but was unsure so didn't want to give wrong information.
I believe Bruce said this in his release notes post for RM 3.0 but I've never tested it.

7

I will have to get better at finding all the different places documentation can live on this site as I do not think I found the release notes but I did come across the rule machine help page before posting to the community but the section on delays did not happen to give the info i was looking for

8

No worries. There is so much information on here that sometimes it hard to see the wood from the trees.

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9

The rule of thumb is, if you have a delayed action (pick the action then check "delay this action" those timers all start at the same time. So, as soon as the rule is evaluated. So, in your case, one would happen 4 hours later, one would happen 1.5 hours after that and the last would happen 3 hours after that. so, the last event in your case would happen at 1:45 pm.

If you are trying to get a delay BETWEEN actions, then you have to use the action of delay, located under "Repeat or Delay actions". This action will cause the sequence of the execution of your actions to be delayed for that long. For example is you have action a followed by a delay of 1 hour followed by action B followed by a delay of 1 hour followed by action c, then A would happen immediately, B would happen one hour after that and C would happen 1 hour after that.

Does that make sense?

So, if you want your last action to be taking place at 9 at night, it sounds like you need an action of delay in your rule instead of using delayed actions. I know it's semantics but it matters.

Or you could just use Thermostat Scheduler (native app) as @bobbles suggests and not have to deal with this in a rule at all. :smiley: Personally, that's what I'd do. Your scheduled jobs could be lost since they are only scheduled at 3:15 am every day. Thermostat schedule wouldn't have that problem. For example, if you had to restore the hub's database at 8am, none of these actions would happen until the next day since all the jobs are scheduled at 3:15 am.

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