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[dave w]

@tuicemen
I am trying to get back to getting this to work again - I tried 3 different X10 sensors that I have - one MS14A and two MS16A. 

I am late to this party, but tuicemens suggestion of a passive radiator is solid.
FWIW
There should be tons of posts on passive radiator or passive antennas for X10 do-bennies, but is just a 18" single strand bare copper wire (maybe 24ga, but wire size isn't a big factor. Coat hangers can be used since Radio Shack is dead. ) hot glued to the left side of the MSxx. Wire can dribble up or down. You can try hot gluing center point of wire to the MSxx left side but you effectively change the antenna from a half wave to a quarter wave, which given the MSxx lously ground plane will reduce range.

[Tuicemen]

I am late to this party, but tuicemens suggestion of a passive radiator is solid.
FWIW
There should be tons of posts on passive radiator or passive antennas for X10 do-bennies, but is just a 18" single strand bare copper wire (maybe 24ga, but wire size isn't a big factor. Coat hangers can be used since Radio Shack is dead. ) hot glued to the left side of the MSxx. Wire can dribble up or down. You can try hot gluing center point of wire to the MSxx left side but you effectively change the antenna from a half wave to a quarter wave, which given the MSxx lously ground plane will reduce range.

The length of wire determines the wave length  your not limited to the length of wire but I'll not get into the math.

[soxfan1966]

My MS10A arrived today and I just installed it.  So far it is triggering the back deck light- seems to be more powerful in terms of the signal.   And since this is a security sensor and triggers all the time I added the Advanced Smart Light program to HG and am using it for this light so it *hopefully* only turns the light on when its dark outside.

I did write a quick program that takes the RF signal from the sensor and uses that to trigger the Back Deck Light.

Will see how it goes.

Thanks

[soxfan1966]

Not sure whom may be familiar with the Advanced Smart Lights program, not sure I have it set up correctly or not.

the pics attached are the light set up with the Advanced Smart Lights settings and the Sensor (the MS10A that arrived today)

*** I also do not have the jkutils weather program installed as I am using the OpenWeatherMap one - not sure if that needs to be updated in the program either

[Tuicemen]

I had played with the smartlight some time ago but had the jkutills program it required for dusk dawn. I nolonger have either installed here in the city and unsure if it is in use at my off grid place.
You may need to either installl the jkutills program (not the open weater one) or edit the smartlight program to point to Openweathermap. I also am not sure if Gene set up the dusk/dawn pulls.

[soxfan1966]

Was looking at it again this morning - realized in my original setup for the Advanced Smart Lights I forgot to click the liuttle Enable box (which is impossible to see as it appears to be a black box on a black background).

I then tried updating the Code for the Advanced Smart Lights to use @SolarTimes.Sunset in place of the jk utils code but it would not compile, I do not think I have the formatting for that correct.  I was going to try and update it to use the OpenWeatherMap info (which is must be pulling in as its part of the widget, and also part of tuicemen's Weather Alerter) but the only flaw with that approach is then the light would come on between sunset and sunrise.

For me - I really only want it to trigger between Sunset and 11pm (this avoids it getting triggered and the light coming on while we are sleeping).

So I went back to try and use just a HG Program for this.  Here is what I came up with:

[Tuicemen]

I didn't think I added dusk/dawn to WeatherAlerter  I guess my memory is worse then I thought.
It is all in how you use the dusk/dawn info in your code, to get it to work the way you wish it to work.
However you have a wizard script setup and if it works for you, Great!
Others may disagree with me here but there is no wrong way to do this, if you get the results you want.
 

[soxfan1966]

My apologizes, the Weather Alerter is showing the updated date/time and not Sunrise / Sunset.  The OpenWeatherMap widget does display the sunrise / sunset time.  It looks like this is what it is using to get those values (so this would replace the jk utils code in the Advanced Smart Lights program):

** corrected **

Code: [Select]

    //jkUtils
    //time_sunrise = DateTime.ParseExact(Program.WithName("jkUtils - Solar Altitude").Parameter("jkUtils.SolarAltitude.Morning.Sunrise.Start").Value, "H:mm", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    //time_sunset = DateTime.ParseExact(Program.WithName("jkUtils - Solar Altitude").Parameter("jkUtils.SolarAltitude.Evening.Sunset.End").Value, "H:mm", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    //OpenWeatherMap
    time_sunrise = DateTime.ParseExact(Program.Parameter("Astronomy.Sunset").Value, "H:mm", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    time_sunset = DateTime.ParseExact(Program.Parameter("Astronomy.Sunrise").Value, "H:mm", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);


[Tuicemen]

My apologizes, the Weather Alerter is showing the updated date/time and not Sunrise / Sunset.  The OpenWeatherMap widget does display the sunrise / sunset time.

not a problem, you had me a bit worried! 

It looks like this is what it is using to get those values (so this would replace the jk utils code in the Advanced Smart Lights program):

var sunset = Utility.JavaTimeStampToDateTime(1000D*(int)weatherData.sys.sunset);
var sunrise = Utility.JavaTimeStampToDateTime(1000D*(int)weatherData.sys.sunrise);

Program.Parameter("Astronomy.Sunset").Value = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(sunset, TimeZoneInfo.Local).ToShortTimeString();
Program.Parameter("Astronomy.Sunrise").Value = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(sunrise, TimeZoneInfo.Local).ToShortTimeString();

Someone else will have to comment on that As I don't have the JkUtils installer nor the Advanced Smartlights installed any more. If my memory is still working bkenobi created the Advanced Smartlights so he may have an Idea what lines need editing to work with the HG now included OpenWeatherMap.

[soxfan1966]

I ended up installing the Jkutils - Solar Altitude and using the Advanced Smart Lights program with that.  As of now, it seems to be working.

[bkenobi]

I'm not sure what you have that's not working. The ASL code uses the sunrise/sunset from jkUtils but it also has commented out another deprecated option. If you want to source sun from another source, just edit the code and compile.