Turn off TV if paused for more than 30 minutes?

[SY3]

The TV in our game room is constantly left on and paused. I'm trying to figure out the best way to program it to turn it off after some time if its been paused.

Should I use a variable? If so, can someone point me in the right direction?

Is there an easier way to write it?

[abeasst]

Should be pretty simple. Just set it so it starts a timer when paused and then cancels the timer when play is it. Have the timer expire and turn the room off.

[Cyknight]

Set the timer to RESET though, don't use START command (reset will set to 0 AND start the timer) or your 30 minutes may just end up being 10 minutes, or 3 seconds, the next time someone hits pause.

START timer will run the timer from it's current point, not from 0.

STOP actually functions more as a pause in that sense.

[SY3]

Thanks for the tips. So, just to be clear, this is what I should do:

1. Create a new timer (Game Room TV Paused) for 30 minutes, Repeating, and in Stopped Status

2. Under Programming, "When Game Room->Satellite pauses" ->Start Timer 'Game Room TV Paused'

3. Under Programming, "When Game Room->Satellite plays" ->Reset Timer 'Game Room TV Paused'

4. Under Programming, "When Timer 'Game Room TV Paused' expires ->Turn off Game Room

[Cyknight]

1 Not repeating

2 Nope : "When Game Room->Satellite pauses" ->Reset Timer 'Game Room TV Paused"

3 Nope : "When Game Room->Satellite plays" ->Stop Timer 'Game Room TV Paused'

4 Correct

[brente]

Set the timer to RESET though, don't use START command (reset will set to 0 AND start the timer) or your 30 minutes may just end up being 10 minutes, or 3 seconds, the next time someone hits pause.

START timer will run the timer from it's current point, not from 0.

STOP actually functions more as a pause in that sense.

I was confused about how the start/reset timer actions worked and after reading the control4 documentation (http://www.control4.com/documentation/Composer_HE_User_Guide/Programming_with_the_Timer_Agent.htm - see section 10), it seems to say that both start and reset will start the timer to zero. However, the difference between start and reset is that reset will fire off a stop and start event when the timer is restarted, whereas the timer start will only fire a start event if the timer is not already running. The documentation does not indicate that a timer can (or will) be stopped and restarted from a stopped point (I.e., the timer is either running from it's initial value or it is not running). When I did some tests, this does seem to be the behavior.

So, seems like what you should use is based on the events you want to monitor for the timer. I would agree that reset is the most flexible as it offers more programming triggers for monitoring what I going on...