I modified my water heater rules in Rule Machine so that they no longer use ‘time of day’ as trigger points.
Instead, they just use sunrise/sunset. Of course, that’s not ideal. So, I will be looking into other ways of doing it.
My first thought is to set up something with a combination of IFTTT and virtual switches.
I know that IFTTT is not reliable tor immediate or critical timing changes, but for something like changing the temp of the water heater, I figure it won’t likely usually matter much if the change in heating set points is delayed 10-15 minutes. It takes the water heater a while to heat it up anyway. So, at least this way, I would be better of than a system where the water heater always remains at the same level (which is what I have had up to this point).
If after testing, IFTTT seems more reliable for these kinds of non-immediate and non-critical timing events, it may come in handy elsewhere too.
I’ll report back on how it goes with using IFTTT for this kind of timing, but if anybody has any more ideas, please share, or point to another thread. Thanks. 