Trigger second action after n minutes

Leroy

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Feb 16, 2017, 12:57:13 PM2/16/17

to Apilio

Hi,

What a great extension to IFTTT you have here!

I'm getting to grips with it slowly... I started off with a logicblock to turn my lights on in the evening if I'm not at home and it seems to be working like a charm!

I have a second use case that I need a little more help with:

I have a Nest thermostat at home to control my heating. I would like to have a button on my smartphone to turn the heating up to 21 degrees for 30 minutes only.

So making a button to increase the temperature is easy. Now I need to find some logic to return it to 14 degrees after 30 minutes.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated!

Lee

pebneter

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Feb 17, 2017, 11:22:59 AM2/17/17

to Apilio

Hi Lee,

many users would welcome multiple actions with custom delays... it's about time I'd implement it :-) Seriously, that's the next feature I'll do, but I have been very busy these days, so I managed to implement some under-the-hood improvements only. But stay tuned.

Regarding your use case: I think I have a solution/workaround in mind that would work - but it's not so straight forward.

I can try to describe it here if you're interested.

Cheers

Philipp

Leroy

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Feb 17, 2017, 3:28:18 PM2/17/17

to Apilio

Hi Philipp,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I appreciate this is a hobby not a production tool.

I'd love to hear your workaround if you have time.

Thanks,

Lee

pebneter

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Feb 20, 2017, 11:23:13 AM2/20/17

to Apilio

Hi Lee,

I tried my idea over the weekend and it actually works very well. The only downside: The duration won't be exactly 30minutes, but in a range of +/- 7.5 minutes of the desired duration (the setting of the example below will result in a heating duration of 25 to 40 minutes).

In Apilio, you need:

One Boolean variable. I called it "heating_bump" (will be be "true" all times, but the relevant information will be the timestamp)
One Condition. I called it "heating_bump_up". Settings: Required state.= true, Modified within 1500 seconds
One Logicblock "heating_control". The "positive action" switches the heating on, the "negative action" switches the heating off

Activate the two advanced options for "automatic evaluation" and "Only fire action if result changed"

External Inputs:

One trigger to activate the heating, e.g. a physical button or any other IFTTT-Trigger than is connected to a outgoing Maker Service Applet which must set the "heating_bump" variable to true whenever fired
You need four (yes, 4) IFTTT-Applets, each triggered every hour a specific time: xx:00, xx:15, xx:30, xx:45

This is not so elegant, since they will be running 24/7 an causing a lot of requests, but nothing to worry about
These applets need to trigger an evaluation of the "heating_control" logicblock

The trick is the timestamp restriction on the condition. As long as the heating_bump has been "freshly" set to true, it will put on the heating. After around 30 minutes, it will be not "fresh" enough anymore and the heating will be switched off.

Leroy

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Feb 21, 2017, 4:59:58 AM2/21/17

to Apilio

Hi Philipp,

Thanks for the reply.

I had tried something very similar to what you put, except I missed the 4 IFTTT applets to evaluate the logic block. I'll add that and report back.

I approached the trigger slightly different, instead of a boolean variable I set a string variable with the text being the timestamp of the request from IFTTT. That way it is completely different every time a request is made. For the condition I opted for it to include the text "at" (which is always present e.g. "February 17, 2017 at 08:55AM") and modified within 1800 seconds.

I may play with the timings a little, I'm not rigid on exactly 30 mins, I just know that 30 mins is roughly enough of a boost. I'm thinking I'll schedule one validation every 30 mins, but leave the " Modified within" set to 1500 seconds. I know this could leave me with 55-60 mins at the longest, but 25 mins at the shortest.

Thanks again,

Lee