Control Fan in Aircraft Hangar

[juless...@gmail.com]

Hi Phillipp,
I need some help with a project that I am involved in. My programming experience is limited to that in college in 1979.

I have an aircraft hangar in Florida that suffers from condensation and mold. So we installed a large exhaust fan to aid in ventilation. However with the variations in outside humidity depending on the weather, season and time of day it is possible to suck in more humid air than you are trying to expel. The fan is controlled by a smart switch on a smartthings hub. The methodogy and hardware are as follows.
1. Inside humidity monitored by an Aeon Labs multisensor.
2. Outside humidity monitored by AccuWeather Connect SmartApp
3. Fan switched by GE Z-Wave switch

All hardware is connected to Smartthings hub.. I have tried SmartApps and IFTTT but the problem is persistence. Things trigger at the wrong times.

Here is the requirement:

If "Hangar Humidity" > 60% AND "Outside Humidity" < 60% THEN "Fan Switch" ON
else "Fan Switch" OFF.

If you can help with Apilio then I would be most grateful and willing to make a donation to your project..

Thanks
Jules Steiner

[pebneter]

Hi Jules,

you already made my day with that headline - it's so inspiring to see in what use cases Apilio can help.

I guess that Apilio should be a perfect fit to what you want to achieve.

I don't own Smartthings hub, but from what you wrote and what the IFTTT Smarththings Service page says (https://ifttt.com/smartthings) it should be possible to have something triggered in IFTTT based on custom humidity thresholds.

Did you already get so far that you were able to trigger something in IFTTT (e.g. a notification to yourself) when the sensors report a value above/below 60% ?

If you manage to do that you can implement the logic you want with apilio.

Cheers

Philipp

[juless...@gmail.com]

Hi Philipp,
Thank you for the reply.
Yes I have been able to trigger the events in IFTTT both for outside and inside humidity. The problems at this time of year occur mostly during the evening. During the day the humidity is below the threshold but as the outside air cools the humidity rises and IFTTT sends an OFF command to the switch. The hanger however is still filled with warmer dryer air so it doesn't trigger an event. Later in the night it has cooled and now reaches the threshold of 60% and sends on ON command to the fan, by this time the air outside is over 90%RH so you don't want that inside IFTTT can't remember the Humidity Is Too High so it won't stop the triggering. I can see that the potential exists for Apilio to address this problem, I just made a mess of it when I tried..
Regards
Jules

[pebneter]

Hi Jules,

I would set it up like this:

Variables

• Create two Boolean variables in Apilio, one called "humidity_inside_above_60" and the other called "humidity_outside_above_60"
• For each of those two variables, you need two IFTTT Applets (so 4 in total)
• If humidity above 60, set Boolean variable to true
• If humidity below 59, set Boolean variable to false

Conditions:

• Create two conditions
• inside_conditions_good_for_venting
• connected to the variable "humidity_inside_above_60"
• required state: true
• (this conditions will return true if inside humidity is above 60)
• outside_conditions_good_for_venting
• connected to the variable "humidity_outside_above_60"
• required state: false
• (this condition will return true if outside humidity is below 60)

Logicblock:

• Connect it to the two conditions
• If positive, switch fan on (via an IFTTT Applet with Maker Service web request as input) 
• If negative, switch fan off (via an IFTTT Applet with Maker Service web request as input) 

Let me know if this helped!

Philipp

[juless...@gmail.com]

Hi Phillip,
Thank you again for the reply..
I created all the parameters as you suggested. The Logicblock evaluation shows the correct result. However the switch will not fire with the URL for either the positive or negative result. I have checked the API key for my account and it is correct.. I will wait until the morning when the humidity hopefully will drop and see if it triggers.. Will keep you advised.
Regards
Jules

PS I can send screen shots on the configuration if you want.

[pebneter]

Hi Jules,

I guess you have seen my troubleshooting tips on the website? http://www.apilio.io/troubleshooting-tips.html

The best way to debug configuration is by going backwards from the action urls as described in the guide.

If I understand you correctly, the Fan does not react if you click on the positive/negative action URLs that are generated by Apilio and shown on the logicblock page? If everything is correct on the IFTTT side, then you should be able to manually remote control your fan with those two links via IFTTT.

If that's not working, then something with either the IFTTT Access Key or the event name must be wrong.

Cheers

Philipp

[juless...@gmail.com]

Hi Phillip,
The maker event is firing now. The problem I had was that the Maker event ID in the Action Setting of the Logicblock, instead of the Maker name. Probably a rookie mistake. Now the firing triggers the switch. I can manually change the Boolean variables and will see tomorrow if the sensors trigger correctly
Kind regards
Jules.