Today's Sunset is Tomorrow

[paws]

I have a simple, one condition, one action program that turns on my yard lights 20 minutes after sunset. It worked fine for a time, then started working only every other day. Looking at the Program Summary page I found that it wasn't a communication problem, but the scheduling itself: After each run it showed the next one would be two days hence.

 

My assumption is that it is somehow related to the fact that 20 minutes after sunset actually falls on the next calendar day due to my latitude (a bit farther north sunset itself is the next day). Perhaps the ISY-99 will not run a "daily" program more than once a day, so it doesn't even examine it to determine that it really will be run the next day, not twice in the same one? Kind of hard to describe what I'm trying to say here.

 

At any rate, I can certainly do a work-around, like just telling it to execute, say, 10 minutes after sunset (I think our sunset never gets past 11:50 PM), I was just wondering if there is some more elegant way of doing it - might be useful for anyone living a few miles up north of here.

 

Thanks!

Jim

[oberkc]

I wonder if breaking this out into two programs will solve your problem. First program something like:

 

if sunset

then run yard light program (then condition)

else

Next program, yard light program:

 

if

then
wait 20 minutes
turn on yard lights

else

[someguy]

I have a simple, one condition, one action program that turns on my yard lights 20 minutes after sunset. It worked fine for a time, then started working only every other day. Looking at the Program Summary page I found that it wasn't a communication problem, but the scheduling itself: After each run it showed the next one would be two days hence.

 

My assumption is that it is somehow related to the fact that 20 minutes after sunset actually falls on the next calendar day due to my latitude (a bit farther north sunset itself is the next day). Perhaps the ISY-99 will not run a "daily" program more than once a day, so it doesn't even examine it to determine that it really will be run the next day, not twice in the same one? Kind of hard to describe what I'm trying to say here.

 

At any rate, I can certainly do a work-around, like just telling it to execute, say, 10 minutes after sunset (I think our sunset never gets past 11:50 PM), I was just wondering if there is some more elegant way of doing it - might be useful for anyone living a few miles up north of here.

 

Thanks!

Jim

 

wow. where do you live that twenty minutes after sunset is after midnight?

 

someguy

[apostolakisl]

Now that is what I call living up north! Does it actually ever get dark enough to see the yard lights with a sunset that late?

 

I like Oberkc solution. The first program starts and ends at the instant of sunset so you don't get the program being active during 2 separate days. The second program triggers on the first program becoming true and has no care in the world about what the date is.

[mitch236]

Would making a folder with the If statement of Sunset and put the Then statement of your second program have the same results?

 

I like the idea of seperating the If and Then/Else statements on all programs. That way there's no chance of the Then statement affecting the condition of the If statement.

[oberkc]

Would making a folder with the If statement of Sunset and put the Then statement of your second program have the same results?

 

I don't believe this would work. The folder would always be true (no condition to make it false). Additionally, folder conditions don't cause an included program to trigger, only enable the programs within the folder. The included program, while enabled, would never be triggered.

[paws]

I obviously need to be more clever. The two-program thing should work marvelously!

 

Even if sunset went after midnight (that starts roughly 50 miles north of here) you'd only have the problem on night a year: Every summer there would be the day with no sunset at all as the time went from the PM side of midnight to the AM side, but I can live with that because (a) it is once a year, and ( it is someone else's problem!

 

Off the technical topic, the sunset problem we have in Alaska (sorry - I would have mentioned where I live before - I didn't know that my profile edit didn't take) is two-fold: First, there's that pesky DST, which artificially moves it one hour later (yeah, like DST makes any difference up here!). Then there was the bright idea about twenty years ago to change our time zones, going from four (the same number as the entire Lower 48 states) to two, and guess which way we jumped? Now we have the equivalent of double-DST, so a 10 PM sunset, solar time, falls at midnight.

 

More importantly, solar noon is at 2 PM, and I always said that I wasn't getting out of bed before noon once I retired, so now I have to find stuff to do in bed until 2 PM. Nice to have a notebook computer!

 

Thanks for the quick replies! You'll probably hear a lot more form me: After reading the forum I found all sorts of marvelous applications for the ISY that make my few, simple programs look pretty pathetic, so it's time to start experimenting. Who knows what sort of trouble I can get into?

 

Jim