"How Do I...?" = Have Control4 send me a text message?

[ILoveC4]

There have been a few requests for this, so here goes!

http://www.c4diy.com/how-do-i-send-myself-a-text-message-using-control4/

[thefred]

Thanks! This is great. Now that I have set up the e-mail notifications, I only want to use them sometimes. Will I need to go in and add the e-mail notification to the script each time or is there an easier way to turn them on and off? I saw that you have some of them marked vacation mode. If you are only using those when you are on vacation, how do you turn the notifications on and off?

[pharmdsmith]

I create a variable and tell it to email if that variable is true. Then you have to set up a way to toggle that variable. (push button, double tap, press & hold, or custom button, just to name a few

[ILoveC4]

pharmdsmith is right. I have a boolean variable for "Vacation Mode", and when vacation mode is true the email fires...if the variable is false it does nothing.

[EagleMoon]

I like this, but is there a simple way to turn off "vacation mode" when not actually home, i.e. set the variable to FALSE remotely? Without loading up Composer and connecting to modify schedule, variables or programming?

I'm still trying to figure out the simplest way to turn my heat back up the day before returning in winter. I only have two months to get it working! I notice the new 4Sight flash version shows "custom buttons". Can there be a custom button that controls a variable? And would it show on both the navigators and the flash version of 4Sight? (Using version 1.8) The obvious answer probably sounds like "just use Control4 thermostats", but there are some other things I want to modify when on vacation that aren't controlled by the thermostats.

In fact, now that I think about it, I need a "vacation" mode that controls my home's systems and another "away" mode that controls whether I get emails. That is, I can be "away" and want emails even when the house is not set for "vacation" mode to save energy.

Edit: I think an issue is that variable values are not saved across reboots -- they get reset to their defined initial value. Is that correct? And the only way to change that initial value is via Composer, right?

Does Control4 have a driver for UPS USB connections so that it could email when AC is off?

[pharmdsmith]

You can't access custom buttons with HTML 4sight, but you can access lighting scenes. Just create a lighting scene with no loads. In composer tell it when that lighting scene executes to set variable to true. I would do one for false too. I wouldn't do toggle since you don't want to pull up composer to see it's state. You can also tell the system to email you if your project reloads(power failure or reboot). If you get that email then you know to go in and execute your lighting scene again to get the variable where you want it.

*edit* originally I thought you mentioned HTML, you can use custom buttons for this too if using 4sight flash.

[EagleMoon]

Just create a lighting scene with no loads. In composer tell it when that lighting scene executes to set variable to true. I would do one for false too.

You can also tell the system to email you if your project reloads(power failure or reboot). If you get that email then you know to go in and execute your lighting scene again to get the variable where you want it.

Good golly, that's simple. (once you know how) Thanks a bunch.

But we really need "user-created variables" to have a property that lets us choose to have them be persistent across reloads.

[ILoveC4]

Are you sure they aren't persisten across reboots?

To toggle the variable you could also use the Twitter driver...send a tweet to the house.

[thefred]

Since I have no buttons or switches as of yet (only audio, video and security), I'll just need to go in and add the e-mail notification to the script each time I want to turn one of the notifications on, correct?

I'm guessing I can't set one of the buttons on the security panel for this, can I?

[pharmdsmith]

Are you sure they aren't persisten across reboots?

I have some that aren't. I have a variable that tracks my master tv to know if it's on or off. On a reboot it always switches to say the TV is on.

[dumaloo]

I got this working and thanks to all of you for the useful info. I am wondering if this can be taken one step further by including the zone, door, window, etc. that has been compromised within the body of the text message? Any idea if/how this is possbile?

[dbuono]

I have set up separate notifications for each zone. For instance my front door is zone 1. I created a notification - front door opened. Then in programing, when opened, send front door notification. This works for my house well because I added 8 zones to my concord 4 so I have a total of 16 which then allowed me to separate all my doors and make specific rooms for window groups.

Takes a little time to set up the various notifications, but once they are in and programmed everything is set after that.

[dumaloo]

Thanks for the reply. Can I use one email and just add a variable that tells me which zone, door or window?

[dbuono]

You can probably do that, but I just created different emails. Just seemed a little easier from a programming standpoint as those variables always confuse me.

[CFUG]

^Same here- discrete emailings. I think it's 50/50 though if you want to place conditions on those sendings. In that case, it might be easier to run a variable into your script and toggle the outcome of the variable based on, say for example time of day daily vs. weekend.