"Home Soon" remote button -- what's the best implementation?

[gxclarke]

I have my system setup with a Home and an Away button, which among other things sets an override on the thermostats while we're away and clears them when we get home (with the hope of decreasing our electric bill).

We go away fairly regularly to visit family who live a couple of hours away, and I thought it would be nice to remotely tell the system that we will be "home soon" so that the in-house climate is nice when we arrive home.

Steps to do this were:

1. Script a keypad button press to delay 90 minutes then press the "Home" keypad button.

2. Create a lighting scene called "Home Soon" to press the new keypad button.

I have two issues with this solution. First, I had to use a real button to setup the action. Is there an alternative technique (like a "virtual button")? Second, I had to create a lighting scene because that's the only way I could find to initiate the action over the web (via 4Sight). Is there another way of triggering this remotely?

Thanks for any info,

Gary

[jbs]

I posted something similar last month:

http://www.c4forums.com/viewtopic.php?id=1594

You don't need to use a keypad button, you can actually program whatever actions you want to happen when the lighting scene is executed (as per my post).

Hope this helps!

--Jason

[gxclarke]

Of course... I was making it unnecessarily complicated. Nice post, and thanks for your help.

I guess that for right now lighting scenes are the key to initiating remote actions.

Regards,

Gary