I'd like to setup a scene that would turn on a lamp for my spoiled dog during the day if it got dark inside due to inclement weather. (She freaks in storms.) What's the best approach? Add a light sensor to the network or is there a way to use the weather function to set something like this up? If sensor, which would you recommend? Thanks in advance for the advice!
Rainy days??
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- Last Post 19 October 2013
Ryan-Scott
posted this
05 September 2013
I'd like to setup a scene that would turn on a lamp for my spoiled dog during the day if it got dark inside due to inclement weather. (She freaks in storms.) What's the best approach? Add a light sensor to the network or is there a way to use the weather function to set something like this up? If sensor, which would you recommend? Thanks in advance for the advice!
You could use the weather device and look at the "CurrentPrecip" and "ForcastPrecip" values to determine if it's raining. You'd need click the icon next to whichever one you want to use and convert it into a device, then use that device as a trigger or a condition in your scene to turn on the lamp.
You could also get a 4-in-one sensor from Aeon Labs. This has a light sensor in it, so you could look at the brightness in the room and use that to determine if the lights should come on.
sgmathews
posted this
05 September 2013
Excellent, thank you. I looked at the MultiSensor, but wasn't sure how well it worked for light (vs motion). I'll try the weather device first and see if that doesn't help my neurotic little animal.
joey10e
posted this
03 October 2013
I have a question along this same topic. I have a z wave outlet with my sprinkler timer plugged into it. I would like to set it up to turn off when it is raining and power on when it is not. I created the device by clicking the current percip icon. what I am a little confused on is what number do set it to turn off for rain and back on for no rain?
Rod
posted this
19 October 2013
I found a way to add 'cloudy', 'rainy' and 'sunny' virtual devices with IFTTT, autoit, gmail and incontrol's get request api. That way I can create scenes that are variable on those devices. Precipitation doesn't tell me if it's cloudy (you assume it is at a certain value but it's not certain) and it's also hit or miss as to what value to say is 'raining'. I also found it wrong a lot.
Steps
1. Create those three virtual devices and create matching scenes which turn on the one and off the others.
2. Create three recipes from IFTTT Weather to Gmail and in the gmail use the dropbox UDF script from here: http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/141340-remote-gmail-udf/
3. The autoit script is just firing a get request to fire the matching scene. On your script that you load onto dropbox it should look like:
$oHTTP = ObjCreate("winhttp.winhttprequest.5.1")
$oHTTP.Open("GET", "http://192.xxx.xx.xxx:xxxx/zwave/activateSceneGet?password=xxx&sceneName=cloudyon", False)
$oHTTP.Send()
Now you can create scenes that are variable based on outside values such as cloudy, rain, sun (ifttt calls it clear) or fog if you want one more.
This is also useful if you want to forget a lux meter and base it off of current outside conditions.
