List of dates/time in a Timer, and accessing Google Calendar

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I have written a piston that makes a Google Home broadcast 5 minutes before an online class is starting, using timers. Currently I have had to use a separate statement for each time slot although that time slot could span multiple days, e.g. every day, at 8:43AM, but only on Monday, Tues…Friday. Also, ideally I’d like to read this info from a Google Calendar account instead of entering the entries again in the piston. So I have two issues.

2) What is the expected behaviour?
For timers, is it possible to list multiple time slots in addition to multiple days of the week? Something like, every day, at 8:43AM, 9:43AM, 10:18AM… , but only on Monday, Tues.

For Google Calendar integration, I guess my question is how I’d be able to access a Google Calendar entry from webCoRE.

3) What is happening/not happening?
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#2

There’s a smart app called gcal search. You can search for entry’s in a google calendar, and it triggers a virtual device it creates when that condition is found.

I’ve used it to pit entry’s in the cal when I am on holiday, the status can then be checked by webcore pistons.

#3

Thank you. Will check it out. Btw my webcore dashboard last night started showing “Your dashboard is having problem loading data” so I can’t access any of my pistons. Tried logging out/backin and updating to the latest optional version [v0.3.111.20210130] but the problem persists. The pistons seem to be working still as this morning I’ve got notifications from at least two of them.

#4

Webcore is not involved in running your pistons, only editing them.

There have been a few posts in the past about the dashboard not loading, it maybe worth seeing if they have any suggestions. If not, I’d raise a separate post to cover it, so it gets better exposure.

#5

Thanks. The webcore dashboard issue is fixed with help in another thread, after “Clean and rebuild data cache.”

I’ve installed the Gcal-Search smartapp and will explore it further.

Btw do you have any idea about my first question on the timer? Multiple time slots AND on multiple days of the week?

#6

I’m not sure exactly what you want to do with the multiple time slots, but suspect you can do it.

As long as you can create events in the google calendar using their repeat scheduling facilities this should work. Each entry would have the same name, so should trigger correctly. One think to consider is that I think the smart app only checks the calendar periodically (maybe every 5 mins) so it may not be great to turn a light on at an exact time. I must admit I can’t remember as I’ve not used it for some time

#7

Thanks. I’ll look into it. Hopefully the app’s check interval is configurable. I don’t need it to do something at an exact time for now, just send a notification (to my Google Home speakers).

Come to think of it, if Google Calendar’s notifications allow external callout it would be a lot easier.