rickerdo Posted November 6, 2013 Posted November 6, 2013 I know it's been asked for before, and I know "hacks" have been implemented to work around this issue, but can we please have the ability to schedule events without requiring a year? It would be phenomenal to be able to create a trigger that reoccurs on the first of every month, for example. I've had my ISY for several years and recently upgraded to a 994i Pro just so I can keep up with new firmware releases in the hopes that one day this request will be implemented. Thanks!
apostolakisl Posted November 7, 2013 Posted November 7, 2013 This is a series of programs I wrote a couple years ago which does what you want and more. http://wiki.universal-devices.com/index ... _Variables
rickerdo Posted November 7, 2013 Author Posted November 7, 2013 apostolakisl, that is the "hack" I mentioned. I really see this as a short coming of the ISY.
apostolakisl Posted November 7, 2013 Posted November 7, 2013 apostolakisl, that is the "hack" I mentioned. I really see this as a short coming of the ISY. I don't think you know what the word "hack" means if you call that a hack.
MWareman Posted November 8, 2013 Posted November 8, 2013 Some call it a 'hack', and others call it a 'useful function'. Personally, I think the latter, but feel (pretty strongly) that such basic schedule options should be baked in, and not need creative programming. Fixed day of each month, odd/even days, 3rd day of each week, 2nd Tuesday of every other month etc. Personally, I've had issues with the program losing track of odd/even that I risk getting a fine from my village for irrigating on an even day, I'm simply amazed that odd or even day scheduling is not included with the irrigation module (that I also own) - given how many communities seem to have this water conservation restriction. I use an external process to set a state variable to 1 for odd day, and that triggers a program that waits 24 hours an resets it. That way, if something goes wrong I don't water. Shouldn't be necessary though.
rickerdo Posted November 8, 2013 Author Posted November 8, 2013 Whatever anyone wants to call it, doesn't change the issue. The bottom line is that cron has been around since the 70's and (I assume) ISY runs a version of Linux. So why in the world does the ISY not support such basic functionality in 2013? I've been a network engineer and sys admin for over 17 years now and have worked on about a dozen Linux/UNIX variants all support basic scheduling that does NOT require a fixed year be applied to said schedule. Anyway, not to sound like an attack against the ISY devs, but come on folks, this should be very simple to implement. I like my ISY very much, but using another bit of software just to control my lights on re-occurring schedules seems somewhat silly.
Xathros Posted November 8, 2013 Posted November 8, 2013 I don't believe the ISY runs anything like linux. I think it is UDI's own proprietary OS. I agree that apostolakisl's programs are NOT a hack but rather a very well thought out solution to the problem. It is more akin to swatting a fly with a sledgehammer in my opinion but for the moment it is the best solution for those that need such capability. I agree that some of these basic date/day features should be built in and I believe UDI has these enhancements on their todo list. I just don't know where they fall on the priority list. That said, with the upcoming variable enhancements, I hope that we will be able to accomplish some of these solutions more easily. -Xathros
Michel Kohanim Posted November 8, 2013 Posted November 8, 2013 rickerdo, We do know that this is a feature we have to add. The problem I have with your statements is the presumption that you already know what we do technically and what makes business sense. i.e. if we don't make money, all this forum and discussions will be moot. In short, the decisions are based on priorities. And, currently, this feature has a low priority simply because there's a workaround (you can call it whatever you like). We could have a discussion about priorities but will not entertain discussing presumptions about our technology. With kind regards, Michel
apostolakisl Posted November 8, 2013 Posted November 8, 2013 Some call it a 'hack', and others call it a 'useful function'. Personally, I think the latter, but feel (pretty strongly) that such basic schedule options should be baked in, and not need creative programming. Fixed day of each month, odd/even days, 3rd day of each week, 2nd Tuesday of every other month etc. Personally, I've had issues with the program losing track of odd/even that I risk getting a fine from my village for irrigating on an even day, I'm simply amazed that odd or even day scheduling is not included with the irrigation module (that I also own) - given how many communities seem to have this water conservation restriction. I use an external process to set a state variable to 1 for odd day, and that triggers a program that waits 24 hours an resets it. That way, if something goes wrong I don't water. Shouldn't be necessary though. I'm curious how it is losing track of odd/even and not the whole thing getting off. Odd/even takes the day of month and divides by 2 and posts the remainder (0 or 1 are the only two possibilities). So either the divide by 2/remainder isn't working correctly, or the day of month is off. The call for the program that runs that divide by 2/remainder is after the line that does the math, so it shouldn't be possible to be done in the wrong order. Personally, I am not use the even/odd program at all so I wouldn't know if mine was off on some random day, but I am using the every 3rd day to run my irrigation and it is working.
rickerdo Posted November 15, 2013 Author Posted November 15, 2013 rickerdo, We do know that this is a feature we have to add. The problem I have with your statements is the presumption that you already know what we do technically and what makes business sense. i.e. if we don't make money, all this forum and discussions will be moot. In short, the decisions are based on priorities. And, currently, this feature has a low priority simply because there's a workaround (you can call it whatever you like). We could have a discussion about priorities but will not entertain discussing presumptions about our technology. With kind regards, Michel Michel, I should not have made any assumptions about the technology used in the ISY. After a few minutes of research I now see that the 99i uses a Freescale processor that most likely runs Freescale's RTOS. Therefor, my statements about cron would not apply. It would be very neat though is a future ISY ran on something like an ARM CPU and did use a stripped down Linux kernel. One can dream, right!? Anyway, back to the topic at hand... is re-occurring scheduling on the road map? If so, when can we expect to see it implemented? Thanks, Rick
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