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[Rocket J Squirrel]

If I create a timer to turn on a light on Tuesday at 8:00 pm and off at 1:00 am, will it do the right thing, namely turn off the light on Wednesday morning? Or will the 1:00 am Off command be sent on Tuesday, prior to the On command?

[Dan Lawrence]

You betcha!!  I have timers on 11 modules that span midnight. They all turn on at dusk and turn off between Midnight and 1:00AM.

[Rocket J Squirrel]

Dan, do your timers run the same every day? If so, you wouldn't notice an issue. (Because, e.g., Wednesday's 1:00 am OFF would handle turning off Tuesday's 8:00 pm ON.)

[Dan Lawrence]

Yes, they are 7 day a week timers.

[Rocket J Squirrel]

So I'm guessing that if I need to turn on at 8pm Tuesday evening and off at 1am Wednesday morning, I need two separate timers.

[Dan Lawrence]

No, one timer (on at 8:00 PM and off at 1:00AM seven days a week) will suffice.

[Rocket J Squirrel]

Sorry, I was unclear. My intention is a timer which happens one or two days a week, not every day.

[steven r]

So I'm guessing that if I need to turn on at 8pm Tuesday evening and off at 1am Wednesday morning, I need two separate timers.

If you want this to happen every day as in Dan's case, no.
If this is a one time event, as I think you're saying, yes.

[roger1818]

Sorry, I was unclear. My intention is a timer which happens one or two days a week, not every day.

In that case you will need to create two timers, one to turn the light on and another to turn the timer off a day later.  I have a similar situation where I have one timer to turn the lights on at dusk 7 days a week, a second timer to turn the the lights off at 11:00pm Sunday-Thursday and third timer to turn them off at midnight on Weekends (Saturday and Sunday).

[arf1410]

This issue was reported many months ago.  I assumed (I guess incorrectly) that X10 had fixed it with a more recent AHP release.  X10 Pro - when will this issue be fixed?

[Rocket J Squirrel]

Thanks for all the replies. I understand why timers behave this way, so I can't really consider this to be a "bug".

But the behavior is counter-intuitive. AHP ought to at least display a warning when the user tries to create a timer which spans midnight because it's probably not going to do what he wants unless it's 7 days a week.

[roger1818]

This issue was reported many months ago.  I assumed (I guess incorrectly) that X10 had fixed it with a more recent AHP release.  X10 Pro - when will this issue be fixed?

This isn't a bug, you just have to know what day you want the lights to turn on or off.  Just like when you program your VCR, if you want to record after midnight, you have to set the date to the next day.

[arf1410]

Software developers ought to be smart enough to make timers work as intended.  And bad analogy with the VCR...If I tell mine to start recording at 11:00 pm, and stop at 1:00 am, it will record for 2 hours, then stop ...

PS  - this post I've linked to  is another of numerous examples that we're are still dealing with sloppy programing 18+ months after rollout! -  http://www.x10community.com/forums/index.php?topic=8552.msg51785#msg51785

[roger1818]

Software developers ought to be smart enough to make timers work as intended.  And bad analogy with the VCR...If I tell mine to start recording at 11:00 pm, and stop at 1:00 am, it will record for 2 hours, then stop ...

I thought you might say that.  With a VCR timer you are always wanting to first start recording and then stop it a short time later (the normal state is to not record).

With home automation you might want to first turn something off for a short while and then turn it on again later.   For example, lets say I want to make it so that the kids can't watch TV between midnight and 7:00am on weeknights, I would set up a timer to turn the module on at 7:00am and off at 12:00am Monday through Friday.  With your "smart timers" the TV would turn off in the middle of their Friday night movie and let them watch TV into the wee hours Monday morning.

If you try to correct for a user's mistakes in software, other users will complain that the software isn't doing what you are telling it to do.

[Dan Lawrence]

So I'm guessing that if I need to turn on at 8pm Tuesday evening and off at 1am Wednesday morning, I need two separate timers.

No.

AHP will allow you to creat a timer for specific days.  When you creat a timer for a module (or modules), when the timer disigner opens, click on the View Adavanced Layout (which is underlined). When the Advanced Layout opens, you will see you can create timers for a single day, weekdays, weekends or any combination. You can select certain days, Sunday to Saturday of each week.  Try it, you will see how easy and flexible timers can be, from every day to once a week on Tuesdays, creating is a breeze.