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Author Topic: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight  (Read 11096 times)

jimtalbert

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Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« on: June 22, 2010, 01:56:09 PM »

I need to be able to set one module to turn on more than 1 hour before twilight but the advance setting only goes up to 1 hour. I have moved my 'location' from Birmingham AL (real physical location) to Phenix City AL to get the earliest twilight time available in CDT but that still doesn't let the module turn on early enough. I need to be able to set the advance setting up to 1.5 hours at least and preferably more.
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dbemowsk

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2010, 07:13:58 PM »

I need to be able to set one module to turn on more than 1 hour before twilight but the advance setting only goes up to 1 hour. I have moved my 'location' from Birmingham AL (real physical location) to Phenix City AL to get the earliest twilight time available in CDT but that still doesn't let the module turn on early enough. I need to be able to set the advance setting up to 1.5 hours at least and preferably more.

Here is a workaround that I found.  I looked in the MyHome.ahx file which is where ActiveHome Pro stores modules macros and timers that you create.  I looked in the timers section at the XML data and found that each timer has a whole bunch of attributes.  One of these attributes is the DuskDelay attribute.  I looked for one that had a big number in it since I knew I had one set for a one hour delay before.  I saw one that had DuskDelay="36000000000", and I knew this had to be a reference to a fraction of time and was probably one hour.  I added 18000000000 to that number, figuring that that should be another half an hour of time, to come up with 54000000000.  When I entered that number for the dusk delay, saved the file and restarted AHP, I checked the timer in AHP that I had originally set for a 1 hour (60 minutes) delay and it now reads "90 minutes" in the AHP timer.  The only problem is that if you click on the up or down arrows next to the delay time, it will revert back to 60.  One other thing is that I do not know if it will store that time in the interface so it can be run from there alone.

The ahx files that AHP creates probably look like a bunch of jibberish to someone who doesn't understand XML formats, so it may be a bit hard to find the time delay for some, but if you just search for DuskDelay as mentioned above, you should be able to find it.  The timer XML data does not have an easy way to identify which timer is which will make it harder to find the right one to modify if you have a lot of different delays set for different things.  With a little bit of work you should be able to find it though.

Hope that helps
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Dan Bemowski
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Dan Lawrence

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2010, 07:23:34 PM »

MYHome.ahx is NOT what you want to use.  It's one of two files (samples.ahx is the other) that comes with AHP.  What I would do is save the current MYHome.ahx with a new name and never use it again.  Just for the record, I have 18 different .ahx files for use during the year.
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dbemowsk

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2010, 07:47:00 PM »

MYHome.ahx is NOT what you want to use.  It's one of two files (samples.ahx is the other) that comes with AHP.  What I would do is save the current MYHome.ahx with a new name and never use it again.  Just for the record, I have 18 different .ahx files for use during the year.

When I set up my system, everything was getting saved to the MyHome.ahx file which has been working fine for me, and I still use it.  I don't understand why it is NOT what should be used.  I am just guessing, but many first time users and people with basic setups probably have everything saving to the MyHome.ahx file since it is the default file that is used.  Regardless, whether you use the default MyHome.ahx file or one of your own ahx files, the concept of what I described should fall true for any of them.  The way AHP saves the delay time for timers does not change because you named your ahx file something else.
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Dan Bemowski
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Dan Lawrence

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2010, 08:59:26 PM »

OK, 60 minutes before/after in a timer is the maximum AHP allows.
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Knightrider

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2010, 09:25:54 PM »

dbemowsk,

Yet another stroke of genius which has earned you a +1 from me.   I love a good hack!
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beelocks

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #6 on: June 22, 2010, 10:03:54 PM »

Clever bloke is that dbemowsk - have a +1
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dbemowsk

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Re: Light turn-on time greater than 1 hour before twilight
« Reply #7 on: June 22, 2010, 11:00:06 PM »

All it took was the right question to spark me to find an answer.  When you are a programmer you learn the clever ways that people use to get the job done.  All it takes is a little digging sometime.

Thanks for the +1's guys
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Dan Bemowski
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