stupid question that I know has been answered before…how do i get this view of my pistons?
When you open CoRE you will see all your pistons.
At the top you will see Dashboard.
Click on dashboard and this will then let you display your pistons as above.
First you need to enable OAUTH for the SmartApp in your ide.
When you do have the dashboard open you will see a url at the bottom.
This can be cut and pasted into your pc browser.
I know one can have IFTTT email if rain is in the forecast, might be a way to also have it turn on a virtual.
I’m having some trouble with the wait function. Not sure what I am doing wrong, but have never really gotten it to work properly. Here is the main piston I am trying to work on right now.
The goal is to prevent a device from being left on for any longer than 1 hour. It was getting forgotten and wasting energy.
Basic Piston
If:
Space heater switch is on
Then:
Wait 60 minutes
Turn off
What currently is happening though is as soon as I turn on the space heater, it turns right off, so it seems like it is ignoring the wait time altogether.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.
It’d be easier to determine with a pic of your actual piston.
It sounds like your wait and your turn off are not in the same action.
IF they are individual actions, the wait and the turn off happen at the same time… within the same action they are sequential.
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Having issues with piston for a camera. If SHM is armed and a contact opens it is suppose to go to a preset and then take a pic, wait and take additional pics. If I use the commands in the device it works fine but through CoRE it doesn’t take the pictures.
That makes sense. I missed the add task option and was about to ask how to do that lol. I found it and it seems to be working now. Thanks.
I don’t think I’m using this right. What I would like to do is have the mode change from away to vacation if it’s been seven hours. I thought I would need to do that with the wait command but now I’m seeing that command just physically waits for a set number of time. See below and please let me know what the proper way to set this up would be .
use the Mode being away for 7 hours as your condition, not the action. the action would be the change to vacation
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Thanks @2l82try1 I set this up so I’ll see if it works. Ive had an issue in the past with timed triggers coming back false forever but it may be unrelated. Sometimes simple is much better!
I don’t think any of the thermostat apps will do what I want so I’m trying to write some custom thermostat pistons and have a couple questions.
My first stab at this (below) is if either of us is home, then at 5 AM turn up the Downstairs thermostat heat and then at 6 AM turn up the upstairs heat (I know, seems odd but trust me.) I think I’ll need a separate similar piston running at night to turn them back down if we’re present.
Is there a better way to do that all in one piston or better to keep them separated? The theory is, if we go out I’m going to manually change the thermostats anyway and won’t want them to change again on their own until we’re present again (whether that’s later at night or at the end of a weekend away, etc.)
So that’s the simple version of what I want. The more complicated version will check the outside temperature. If it’s really cold (say, below 25) I’ll want to turn the heat up earlier. If it’s warmer (say, above 40) I might want to turn it up later. I am just using older Filtrete 3M-50 thermostats so they can’t figure out what time to turn on based on the weather like newer ones can. I’m looking for suggestions for the best way to do all that as well. I have Accuweather and Weather Tile installed so I can query the outside temps.
Im not sure if it ism It would be nice. I always just make a new task that mimics last task. Then edit the one in the middle.
I think that helps. Is that all one big Simple piston?
Yes. One simple piston that is split into groups. Each group then has an action of what to do when true. (Need expert mode enabled for this).
As you can see I have the heat gradually increasing through the day and it also turns off when we are away. With the Tado thermostat that I have, when it is turned off it goes into ‘Frost Protection’ mode. i.e. heat to 5 deg C.
Basically you can set what you want in each group.
Cool, I’ll have to play with this some more. Before you posted I ended up writing my Evening piston and came up with something slightly different than the one I posted above. But I think your way is better. Except I want to keep using presence to control things since I don’t really use modes for anything yet (as long as my wife doesn’t forget her iPhone. Again.)
I also create a virtual switch to override everything and immediately put both thermostats into “weekend away” mode with the temps both locked at 57. Then another to take it out of that mode and kick it back into scheduled mode.
I use presence to set my mode to away.
So when either me or my wife are home, heating runs normally. When we are both away, heating turns off.
I also have some recipes in IFTTT so that I can boost the temperature up using Google Home on a temporary basis and when the next time window kicks in it goes back to schedule.
Seems to be working OK.
I haven’t figured out yet how I want to use modes but that could work too. Do you use a piston to set the modes? I’m not sure which way is easier to deal with. One thing I was thinking is that if a mode change didn’t happen for some reason (we leave but the mode fails to change) then at the next schedule heat change time it might be more reliable to have ST check our presence the way I was doing it.
The other thing is that I don’t want my heat to change when we’re away. I know if we’re just going out to dinner or if we’re going on a week vacation, but ST doesn’t. When I leave the house I decide how I want to set the heat long before I leave. With baseboard forced hot water it stays warm for a long time and also takes a long time to warm up, so my current presence isn’t the determining factor for when I want the heat to turn on or off. Always looking for a better way to do things though.
Hey @eibyer, just looping back. Did you ever get a chance to try the other piston? If it doesn’t work do you suspect a hardware limitation?
