Is it possible to have condition like "If weather is cloudy then offset -30 minutes else offset 0 minutes"

#21

The results of the Expression can be put into a Global variable…but the expression itself cannot…well, I suppose you can literally type in the text into a global variable and it will be there. But it won’t evaluate the expression when the piston runs.

#22

Alright…I’m going to point out something potentially controversial here…but I strongly believe this to be true.

You can’t have a Timer act as a dud block in a piston. It won’t work to make the rest of the piston actually trigger anything.

I believe you’re going to need a different approach to get the desired effect there. Like you could use an On Events from some of the lights…or something like that. But I believe a Timer will only execute the code which is within the Timer…and since there’s no code in a blank Timer that means it won’t execute anything.

#23

I see your point. What do you think about this approach:
time happens daily at 30 minutes to sunset
AND
((contains($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather, ‘cloudy’))==‘true’?’
Do turn on the lights
else
wait 30 minutes
turn on the lights

Not sure if the piston will run after 30 minutes.

#24

It will work to force a reschedule… but not to actually fire anything.

#25

:slight_smile: That was my initial suggestion. Robin believes the Timer will work though. I don’t know specifically. I’m just going based on a piston I have which only executes the code within the Timer and nothing else. You just need it to reevaluate an Expression. I know you can force a Timer to do that by putting in a dud block with a Trigger in it… But I’ve not seen this done with a Timer as the dud block. Leave it as is and let us know how it goes.

#26

Thanks. Will report the outcome.

#27

Apologies for hijacking this thread (I figured this was a simple enough question to not warrant a new thread), but when I go into Webcore and have it evaluate this string (in the ‘Evaluation Console’):

contains($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather, ‘cloudy’)

it evaluates to FALSE …but yet when I plugin $weather.conditions.current_observation.weather it says ‘Partly Cloudy.’ Why is this evaluating to FALSE out of curiosity? I’d expect TRUE.

#28

My guess is, the current weather in your location is cloudy and not partly cloudy.

#29

Nah… my bad… it’s case sensitive.

#30

Yeah, that’s the conclusion I finally came to or my ‘Expression Console’ was haunted :slight_smile:

#31

I guess there’s always a risk that weather underground could publish upper or lower case… I’m not sure how good they are at standardisation???

Maybe the following would be more robust (changes all letters to lower case):

contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘cloudy’)

#32

I keep bugging you, may be there is write up on using expressions, but what is the correct syntax for
((contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather, in (‘cloudy’ ‘partly couldy’))))==‘true’?’-30’:’0’)

#33

contains(haystack, needle) will already return true when the weather is ‘cloudy’ or ‘partly cloudy’ or anything else that contains the word ‘cloudy’… that’s the reason I chose to use the contains() function in the first place.

I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve?

#34

Here’s the documentation btw:

https://wiki.webcore.co/Functions

#35

Thank you and thank you.

#36

Great news, thanks to you all, the Piston did fire at offset = 0 minutes as the weather was clear today. But the fade is still not working. I am not sure why, but the logs are not printing even though i have the logging set to Full. Looks like the piston is repeatedly sending set color temp instead of level.

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#37

Is there a simple way to add more options than ‘cloudy’ without duplicating the entire line and using ‘||’ (or’s)?
For example, ‘cloudy’ or ‘rain’ or ‘overcast’… etc…

#38

I’m afraid not… you have to duplicate and use ||'s outside of the contains() function :sob:

contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘cloudy’)||contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘rain’)||contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘overcast’)

I agree it would certainly be nice to use logical operators within the contains() function, i.e.:

contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘cloudy’||‘rain’||‘overcast’)

@ady624 @ipaterson

#39

Or in this case, might be simpler to just negate it. If it’s not clear, then it must be some type of cloudy/rainy, etc.
!contains(lower($weather.conditions.current_observation.weather),‘clear’)

#40

Might be sunny lol?