Start/pause pistons from app

#1

I know an app is already in beta for location services, so I figured I’d add this: Ability to see all of the pistons on the app and be able to toggle all/some/one specific one to pause with a flip of a switch…

I’ll give a real-life scenario: Say you need to leave a door open for a while and you have a piston that monitors the door being open too long. In order to stop the piston, you have to be near your computer (or phone if you have the dashboard loaded.) It would be easier if these were accessible via the app so you can just click it on/off as needed.

I am sure there’s many other things in store for the app, but thought I would throw this out there.

#2

Create an ST routine that turns on and off a virtual switch. That virtual switch pauses and unpauses your piston.

Add that routine to your widget. Done!

#3

True…but that would have to be done for each piston you wanted that option for…Since there is going to be an app anyways, I thought I would suggest the above…

#4

I see

#5

Just out of curiosity, how do you make the actual piston pause by programming?

#6

Like this, :grinning:

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#7

Wow, I missed that…probably passed that command 1,000 times…lol…Thanks…I guess the easiest way to remember is leave the virtual switch ‘on’ to leave the piston alone and ‘off’ to pause the piston…assuming we can just resume the piston by turning the virtual switch 'on" again…I guess another way is to do it the opposite, turning on the virtual switch keeps the piston unpaused, etc.

Do you have any pistons set up where the ‘on’ and ‘off’ of the virtual switch will pause/unpause? Will the ‘else’ section accomplish this?

#8

Sorry. I don’t personally have any need to pause/resume so I cannot comment on how well it performs.

But here’s one I just made for you to try.

Added the execute just in case it’s a time sensitive piston.

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#9

Thanks…I did try it out and noticed the piston didn’t start up right away…What does execute do exactly? Does it make the piston run again or actually execute it as if the condition(s) were met?

#10

It causes it to evaluate, so if it had timers in it it will re-schedule the next timed events. And while it’s evaluating if the conditions are met it will act on them

#11

Ok…thanks!