apostolakisl

I just bought a new building for my office, gutted it, and used the CREE ceiling troffers instead of fluorescent in the new build-out. http://crseries.creeledlighting.com/ I primarily used the CR22 model. They are very good. The light they make is in no way a compromise. It has great color rendering, it is bright, and it is soft. They cost about double a conventional ceiling troffer but use about 1/2 the electricity and last 50,000 hours to 80% original lumen (of course I'm going on their word with that). So they should be maintenance free for the life of my office. My electric bills are half what the previous occupants paid (I also replaced the HVAC units and put in spray foam insulation). I did get back about 20% of what I spent on them in rebates from my local electric provider so the ended up costing about 1.5x what I would have paid for normal ones. Of course normal ones also cost you about $40/ea every 5 years or so for re-lamping in addition to double the electric use (and double the heat production which is important where I live).

In order to have a random shut off time you must have a wait. You are terminating a wait. As I mentioned, "stop program" only affects a program that is currently executing a "then" or "else" clause. The only way to have an "else" or "then" clause that lasts more than a split second (and thus has opportunity for a stop to be interjected) is during a "wait" or "repeat". . . mostly just "wait" since "repeats" without "waits" don't take very long either.

Stop program does not disable disable the program. It merely stops the current execution of a "then" or "else". It has no impact on past actions of the program or futures executions of the program either from its own "if" or by some other program initiating it. It is only useful to stop a program that is in a "wait" or "repeat" where a "stop" could be interjected. In the program shown in the jpeg earlier in this thread, the "stop" command will do nothing. That program is not running except for a split second at the "from" and "to" times. So you will be stopping a program that is not running. Look at the program summary page, if the program does not saying "running then" or "running else", then telling it to "stop" does nothing. Stopping an "idle" program is a non-action. Programs are not "running" between the "from" and "to" times, they only ran AT the "from" and "to" times (assuming there is nothing else causing it to run).

I think you don't exactly understand how they work. There is nothing to maintain at all. Once it is installed it is maintenance free. The only caveat is if the ISY is offline at midnight and continues to be offline past the "catch up" time you set into ISY on reboot, it will fall 1 day behind. But there is a simple fix to that, you run the "advance one day" program. Since I finished the program, I have not had to touch it once. The only "tedious" thing is that you have manually add the variable labels when first installed. The programs themselves can be downloaded and installed as is, no tinkering at all. And the best time to install this set of programs is BEFORE you start using up a bunch of variables for other things. It would be tedious to change the variable addresses, but you would only need to do that if you had a conflict because you already used those addresses for other variables.

ISY has no wild cards when it comes to dates. In other words, you can't do something like every Dec 5 and leave the year blank. I wrote a series of programs that use the variable function in ISY to fix the problem. Or, you can just do what you are already doing and spell out the exact dates for each year all connected with a bunch of "or" statements. The programs I wrote allow for pretty much any kind of recurring date function you might ever think of. http://www.universal-devices.com/mwiki/ ... _Variables EDIT: I just read your program more closely and what you are doing won't work at all. To write a single program and be able to not touch it again (for at least several years), it would need to go like this. (from 2012/12/15 to 2013/1/3 or from 2013/12/15 to 2014/1/3 or from 2014/12/15 to 2015/1/3 etc) and (time is from 4:30 pm to 10pm or time is from 7am to 8:35am)

What is powering your IO lincs during a power outage? If it is the generator, and the generator fails to start with a power outage, you won't get your email. The only solution I can think of is to put them on a UPS along with a dual band device to jump the signal over to a dual band PLM or other dual band device on the same power lines as a non-dual band PLM.

No. You do it in an Elk rule. And if you need ISY to do something use an Elk output as a flag.

Solutions: 1) Tell her how you want it done and expect it to be done that way. She is an employee, not your wife. 2) Disable "single keypress quick-arm" under the "area" menu. (also stops everyone else) 3) Why does it matter who is arming the system? If the system is armed by any mechanism to away mode, set the thermostat to unoccupied. If you want to limit it to certain hours, then add that in.

I'm not sure I understand the confusion. You just go to Elkrp and under her user name, click the box for "arm" and "disarm" You can even write rules that only have her user account active during certain hours.

I think this should work for your second question. I don't have a motion detector but I will take a guess that they work like a switch when triggered and used a "control on" terminology. I also believe that all of the Elk armed states are triggers when they become those states. So when you leave, there is an exit timer. When the exit timer finishes, the house becomes armed away or whatever so until the exit timer finishes, the program is false. After that, any motion detector activity triggers the program to true. It then waits 2 minutes before sending the email. This allows time for the program to terminate if it retriggers to false. This will happen if the system is disarmed and prevent an email from sending when you arrive home and turn it off prior to 2 minutes. If Control 'motion detector' is switched On And ( Elk Area 'Main House' 'Armed State' is Armed Away Or Elk Area 'Main House' 'Armed State' is Armed Stay Or Elk Area 'Main House' 'Armed State' is Armed Night Or Elk Area 'Main House' 'Armed State' is Armed Vacation ) And Elk Area 'Main House' 'Armed State' is not Disarmed Then Wait 2 minutes Send Notification to 'lou gmail' Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') For the first question, I already do this with the door contacts. They are designed to turn the light on if they are already off. If they are already on, this program does not do anything. I assume if the light is already on, I have it on for a reason, and don't want someone opening the door to cause it to shut off in a few minutes. I also have it set up with over to programs so that if someone pushes the "on" button while the program is running, the program terminates and the light does not shut off. It also beeps at you 30 seconds before turning off to warn you. If Program 'Dark Outside' is True And Elk Zone 'Back Door' is Violated And Status 'Garage / Third Garage-Coach L' is Off And Status 'Garage / Third Garage-Breez L' is Off Then Run Program 'back door 2' (Else Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Back Door 2 If Control 'Back Hall / Back Hall Ext Dr-Coach' is switched On Or Control 'Back Hall / Back Hall Ext Door-Breezway' is switched On Then - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Else Set Scene 'Coach Lt S' On Set Scene 'Breezway S' On Wait 5 minutes Set 'Back Hall / Back Hall Ext Door-Breezway' 250 (Beep Duration) Wait 30 seconds Set Scene 'Breezway S' Off Set Scene 'Coach Lt S' Off

I think all of the "from" field letters also count. Also carriage returns and spaces. The limitation is not ISY, it is the protocol for texts within the cell network. So I truly doubt the letters used to describe the variable matter since none of them get sent to the cell provider.

I believe texts are limited to 160 characters. Did you have a bunch of other stuff in your body section that you didn't show in your original post?

I just tested the following in the body section: Frt Dr ${elk.zone.1.status} Bck Dr ${elk.zone.2.status} Fam Dr ${elk.zone.3.status} Arm ${elk.area.1.armUpState} And this was in the body of the email I received: Frt Dr Normal Bck Dr Normal Fam Dr Normal Arm Ready To Arm Not sure where you are going wrong.

You have made the correct assumption. You are to replace the # with the actual number. I have not used this feature for armed/armed-up state, but I have used it for zones and it works as expected. Have you tried it for zones? I assume the email is showing the part you typed in, the "Armed State:" and "Armed Up State:" followed by blank space. Correct?

Not sure what you mean by used "time" as a trigger. But the 3 program example above would not function properly if you used a time to trigger it. It is designed to start counting down when the motion detector trips and to continue counting down after a power failure by having the second program run at startup.

You need to use "State" variables. State variables trigger the if to run every time they change. You probably are using integer variables. And as mentioned, the second program needs to be set to run at startup to get the ball rolling again after a power failure.

If you are concerned with ISY not knowing that a power outage occurred, you can write a script on a computer that posts a variable to ISY on reboot. Of course you need the computer set to reboot with power restoration. The variable could say be set to 1 by the script. When that happens an iSY program could trigger a query and then reset the variable to 0.

Power your ISY (not the PLM) via UPS? ISY only uses like 7 watts. So it can run all day on one of those.

Put all the devices in your house that you want to turn off into a single scene. Write a program that includes all of your motion detectors connected by "or" in the if section. Write a then statement that starts with "wait 24 hours" then sets that scene off.

Just write a program that activates the f-key on one of your keypads that is set as a panic button if the I/O linc detects an opening while the system is armed.

Doing the programs as below will prevent you from getting more than 1 notification per light turning on. The second program will trigger only when the lights status changes to on. So if it is already on, the program won't trigger even if it gets another on command. It has to change, and it has to change to on. Of course you will get an email every time the light turns on no matter how it got that way. Also, you will get an email if someone manually dims it, then turns it back to full on. But I am guessing that this is not really how you expect to use the light.? If Control 'MS2_UpBed-Sensor' is switched On And Status 'MS2_UpBed-Sensor' is not On Then Set 'Upstairs / Upstairs Bedroom / UpBed Lites' On Else Wait 4 minutes Set 'Upstairs / Upstairs Bedroom / UpBed Lites' Off Send Notification to 'Somebody' content 'UpBed-LitesOff' If Status 'Upstairs / Upstairs Bedroom / UpBed Lites' is on Then Send Notification to 'Somebody' content 'UpBed-LitesOn' Else empty

I can't think of any way to combine the on and off into one program because they have different conditions. On always occurs, off only occurs when the other program is false.

Put all of the lights except the timed lamp post into a scene along with the switch you are using to control them. This will take care of everything turning on/off with the switch except for the one that is on the timer. You already have a timer program for that light. Use that program as a "flag". If control "whatever switch you are using" is switched on Then set "outside lamp post" on If control "whatever switch you are using" is switched off and program "outside light timer" is false Then set "lamp post light" off This assumes you are using a kpl button or other toggle on/off button to control your outside lights. If it is a dimmer then you may consider altering it to status not off.

I don't know that much about irule, but I do have an itach and an ISY. I would think you would be better off skipping ISY for commands originating from irule. The only caveat would be if you want ISY to track the status of your components. If for example you were going to have ISY controlling the same components as irule independently, then you would want a single gate keeper to keep it all straight.

I use my Elk panel to control the sprinklers. ISY initiates the automatic cycles via its programs, but the valves are controlled by Elk relays. Elk has a pretty simple user interface for turning outputs on/off that my wife actually can use. In other words, if I wanted to turn on something like "back yard beds", I just click on "outputs" and "back yd bed" and it turns them on. If you were using Insteon, and you had 8 zones, you could dedicate an 8 button kpl to the job with each button being 1 zone. If you push button A for example it could be linked to zone 1. You could manually turn it off by turning off button A, or you could write a program in ISY that turns it off automatically after some period of time. But that time would not be easily adjustable by a non-knowledgeable person. You might set that time to 30 minutes just to make sure it doesn't get forgotten on all day.