1) Give a description of the problem
I’ve seen some pistons that set the piston state to something custom like the current value of the variable in a switch statement.
what is a piston state?
how can changing a piston state be useful?
I’m not talking about toggling “running” and “paused”
could I set my piston state to “beer?” If i could, what would I do with it besides wish I could drink it? 
Yes — you can set your piston state to 
or 
— you can even add another every time you drink another 
The piston state is displayed on the dashboard (typically true or false unless you use custom piston states). This allows you to use the dashboard to get information at a quick glance:
You will need to disable automatic piston state for that to work…
Thank you.
So where do those icons come from? You’ve got two in your temp piston, a chicken, el sol, a car with a check and a battery. Is there a list of supported icons somewhere?
Those are simply emojis which are Unicode characters. You can enter them directly into the text fields.
Forgive my ignorance but how do i actually call that?
i’ve got a string variable but how do I use the unicode to convert to the emoji? I was able to do :fa-bath: in the sting variable and that worked but when i put the unicode for 
(colon beers colon) which i believe is “U+1F37B” from (https://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode) it only comes out as the actual code and not the emoji.
I’m wondering if I’m just not using the correct method to make it work.
UPDATE
I was able to go to that site and there is a column that lets me copy the emoji. I was able to paste that into the variable. I suppose that is the best way to do it. If there is a method of using the unicode chars then I’d be interested in learning it.
I depends on what operating system you use to compose your pistons. Some have a on-screen Emoji keyboard which might allow searching as well.
How do I change piston state? I see that I have to disable automatic piston state but where do I do that?
Additional question since I have now dived head first into piston states.
Can one piston clear or reset the piston state of another? And if so how?
Not directly as far as I know but if you add a logic inside the piston to watch for a trigger from another piston then the target piston should be able to clear its state on command. Trigger can be in the form of a passed argument. This is not tested though 
You are correct, @eibyer…
I just want to add that the called piston will run top to bottom when the argument is passed, so you will have to code accordingly.
Rough example…
piston 2 will have a make web request task calling piston 1’s external url with /?command=resetState appended. Once triggered, piston 1 will clear its piston state.
how simple the solution was!
