Help: Ring Camera motion triggers Rachio Sprinklers

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I have a shed in my backyard that is on it’s last leg and does not currently have a door. Lately, every night around 2:00am a couple of stray cats are coming into my backyard and going my shed for a late night rendezvous. I know this because my Ring Security Camera picks up the motion/action. They are also peeing on everything in the shed. I know this because the entire shed smells like cat urine.

2) What is the expected behaviour?
By my calculations, approximately 2.5 seconds after the camera detects the motion, the cat is positioned right in front of one of my sprinkler heads (connected by Rachio). I am hoping to create a piston that will trigger the rachio sprinkler (zone 1) when the camera detects motion. It will run for 60 seconds and then turn off.

3) What is happening/not happening?
Literally nothing. I set the ‘active time’ to 18 so that I could test it without having to be up at 2:00am. When I went outside to test it, the camera picked up the motion but the sprinklers did not turn on. Otherwise I have no idea what’s wrong.

4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston

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image.png1178×532 24.5 KB

#2

For kicks, try moving the $hour24 line below the Motion statement and then fix your range to show lower to higher number. Logs will help too…

#3

Unfortunately, there are no logs to show. Literally nothing is being logged.

Can you explain what you mean by fixing the range? Are you suggesting that I change it to inside of range 4 and 18? Wouldn’t that mean it would be active during the day (versus the night when the cats are out)?

#4

If there’s nothing being logged, I’d suggest breaking it down to its simplest form and just put the motion sensor in there and do a simple Push notification. If that works, then add the time condition., if that works, then add the sprinkler.

Edit: Regarding the hour range, webCoRE is smart, but not sure if it is THAT smart to figure to break down that time range. I would probably do… inside of range 0-4 or range 18-24

#5

When spanning midnight, I usually write it inverted like this:

IF {$hour24} is NOT inside of range 4 and 17.
This means it will only be true from 6pm until 3:59am

Also, I believe system variables work a bit differently. I would code like this:

IF Sensor's motion changes to active
Then
   IF {$hour24} is NOT inside of range 4 and 17
      Then do stuff
   END IF
END IF

(Notice the second IF is inside the first)