Alternative to The Flasher and The Big Switch

[Ducky]

I am starting to learn some coding for SmartThings apps and I’m trying to update some of the apps that I had used in the past. My experience has been with some of the old school languages out there, but I’m learning quick.

I understand that scheduling has now changed so that unless the device can support a flash command, you cannot flash a series of lights like in the past. Is the basic premise that now apps can only send commands once and not loop to take up resources?

I am specifically trying to figure out a way to notify someone that might still be in the house that the alarm will arm in about 5 minutes so they can stop the routines from setting the alarm. Any other ideas on how to notify someone, maybe with a short burst of the siren?

The other challenge I am trying to solve for was when I was using The Big Switch to dim a group of lights together with a virtual switch. Is it possible now to determine the current dimmer level of the switch and use a smart app that increases or decreases the level by x% based on presenting a respective switch?

[Ducky]

I may have answered my own question on flashing which I believe uses delay commands.

delayBetween(cmds,<timeinms>) does not work

Not sure if it’s related, but the delay parameter in commands like: switch.on([delay: 2000]) is currently broken and they’re working on a fix. Not exactly the same problem though, in that case it’s reading 2000 as seconds instead of milliseconds. But maybe both are part of some wider underlying problem.

[JDRoberts]

There are sirens with a strobe feature, I would think those would work.

Also if it meets your time constraints, if the lights have their own IFTTT channel it may have a flash or blink option. HUE Bridge does. We use these at our house to blink hue lights as a notification, but it’s not for security purposes.

[vors]

FYI in case people find this post but not the other where the delay problem was answered more completely:

@jody.albritton

Yes there is. The delay in and delay between both used a seconds to milliseconds conversion that was not moved over to the new scheduler. We have a hotfix to put the conversion back in and a unit test to make sure that it’s not removed unintentionally in any future updates.

@jody.albritton

Delay in milliseconds should be restored in a hotfix tomorrow. If you do have a ticket number send it to me anyway.

That one was posted 18 hours ago, so depending on time zone “tomorrow” either means today 3/31 or tomorrow 4/1.