Thermostats generally share some common functions:
Newer thermostats often also have a program mode - they can store programming so that they can automatically change settings depending on time of day, day of week, etc. For basic operations, we'll assume that Indigo will be performing this function.
Tom has 1 thermostat, and he wants to have temps set multiple times during the day: Morning, Day, Evening, Night. Each of these will be a separate Time/Date Action. For this scenario, we assume that you've already defined your thermostat in Indigo. The How-to level of difficulty is Simple. Here's how he'd create them:
TIME/DATE ACTIONS
(or one of it's subfolders) is selected in the outline view on the left side of the main windowNew…
button above the t/d action list Time:
at which this t/d action will fire: Tom sets this to 6:30am because that's about 30 minutes before he gets up in the morning. Date:
for which this t/d action will fire: for this scenario, Tom wants it to go off every day, so he selects “Every 1 days”Condition
tab, so click on the Actions
tabType:
popup control, select Control Thermostat
Action:
popup control, select Set Heat Setpoint
Device:
popup control, select the name of your thermostatTo:
text field, type your desired Heat Setpoint: Tom likes it warm in the morning, so he sets it to 74Add New
button on the lower-left side of the screen. This will create another action for this t/d action to execute (when you do, you'll notice the text action 2 of 2
in the middle at the bottom of the window - this let's you know that you have 2 actions for this t/d action)Type:
popup control, select Control Thermostat
Action:
popup control, select Set Cool Setpoint
Device:
popup control, select the name of your thermostatTo:
text field, type your desired Heat Setpoint: Tom likes it warm in the morning, so he sets it to 76Add New
button.Type:
popup control, select Control Thermostat
Action:
popup control, select Set Mode
Device:
popup control, select the name of your thermostatMode:
popup control, select Auto Heat/Cool
OK
button to save the changes
OK, so now at 6:30am, the thermostat will change it's settings to adjust the house temperature so that it's between 74 and 76 degrees fahrenheit. Tom likes a pretty specific range of temps in the morning. However, during the day, when nobody is home, he wants to save energy, so the settings for Day are much more liberal. Repeat the steps above with the following differences:
Now, at 9:00am, the thermostat will change it's settings to adjust the house temperature so that it's between 65 and 80. This should save some money in the long run. Now, he wants to make sure the house is at a livable temperature when everyone starts coming home for the evening. Repeat the steps above with the following differences:
The house will be nice and ready for everyone to come home and enjoy the evening. Finally, he wants to save some money at night - but, nobody in his family likes to sleep in a hot house. Repeat the steps above with the following differences:
That's it. By using t/d actions, Tom now has a house that smartly adjusts temperatures for various parts of the day, which will save money in the long run. But, you know, there is one thing that's a bit of a problem for Tom: he wants the daytime temperature to be set differently if it's a weekend day (Saturday or Sunday).
So, Tom has all of the t/d actions created in scenario 1, but he wants different behavior during the day if it's Saturday or Sunday. There are several ways of doing this: have 2 different Day t/d actions, use AppleScript as the action, etc. To keep this as simple as we can, we'll go with the former. What we'll do is to alter the current “Day House Adjustment” to only work on weekdays, and create a new one that works only on weekend days. The How-to level of difficulty is Simple.
Edit…
button.Days of week
in the Date:
sectionSu
and Sa
to unselect themOK
button to save the changes
Now, this t/d action will only execute on weekdays. Next, let's create one that will execute on weekend days.
Duplicate
buttonDate:
section, unselect all the currently selected days and select Su
and Sa
.Action
tab and change the heat setpoint to 70 and the cool setpoint to 78 - to do this, click on the Actions
tab - you'll see a list of the actions, just double click on the “set heat setpoint” line to change that; when you've changed the temperature value, click on the Show All
button to see the list again
Great! Now, Tom's family will be more comfortable when they're home on the weekends.
As you can see, there is a lot of flexibility in Indigo to control your environment. Earlier, we named the t/d actions “XXX House Adjustment”. This was intentional, because we might want to do something else when the day transitions are made. This How-To discusses using variable change triggers to do some interesting things.