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Countdown Timer


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I use the Control4 Countdown experience button for doing countdowns of up to 180 minutes (current limit on this driver) and BNet Solutions cool timer driver for stop watch type information (minutes hours and even days counting up).

I am, however, surprised that (AFAIK) there is no countdown timer (experience button) available for hours. I would love to be able to kick of an 8 hour countdown via a button press and be able to visually see how many hours are left to go on the experience button (like one does for minutes with the Countdown driver).

Is anyone aware of such a driver? Equally, is there a working driver available that does this for days (as opposed to hours)? I know @msgreenfdeveloped such a driver a few years ago but I am not sure if this is still available?

I have workarounds for both hours and days using thermostats to display the hours / days to go in the countdown and Blackwire’s emoji pack (up and down arrows) to change the starting point (up / down and hour / day).  While this works very well and much of the code is reusable, it does take some coding every time I add a new countdown (hours or days) whereas the native Countdown (minutes) driver is trivial (after a dealer adds the driver) to setup / program against.

Any guidance on where I can find an hours or days countdown driver would be appreciated!

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  • 3 months later...

I'm new to C4 and Composer, but had a previous home automation system with When/Then programming capability. I found your post while looking for a way to (1) determine the elapsed or remaining time on a running timer and (2) display that information either in a notification or on the screen. Do you know if that can be done and/or would you be willing to share your "workarounds for both hours and days using thermostats to display the hours / days to go in the countdown and Blackwire’s emoji pack (up and down arrows) to change the starting point (up / down and hour / day)"? 

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5C99A087-B1AA-47F0-B723-DDE65B478094.jpeg.985efe94c42cd2834ca5ec3312fe58c0.jpeg
 

@EdE


In the above screenshot, my irrigation will turn off tomorrow at 9.30am.  It will turn back on 2 days later at 9.30am.  The pool heaters will turn off in 5 days time (at 9.30am) and back on in 10 days time.

Pressing the first button causes the “Change Variable” to increase by 1.  When it reaches 14, another press resets it to 1.

Currently “Change Variable” is 6.  Thus pushing increase or decrease will result in the number of days until the pool heater turns on increasing or decreasing by 1.

When any of the 14 variables or the “Change Variable” change (due to pressing one of the other 3 buttons), I update a thermostat to display the new variable as shown above.

I run a schedule at 9.30am every day to reduce all 14 variables by 1 (unless they are already 0).  If they change to zero on a given day then the relevant actions are triggered (eg turning off the pool heaters).

Lots of programming but this is a good example of how I allow count downs in days.

I do something similar for countdowns in hours where the hours are more than 3 (maximum any of the current experience button drivers handle).  However, instead of using a daily schedule to trigger changes for display purposes and to determine when to trigger the event (I.e. at 0), I use a repeating timer set for 60 minutes to achieve the same result.

As mentioned previously, @bnethave a phenomenal driver (btimer) which does the reverse (acts like a stopwatch).  Maybe one day they will do a countdown version too which would be great as it would be more flexible than this and deal with most of the programming!

 

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Very creative!... thanks for sharing. It also led me to one of your previous posts that listed driver developers...which identified at least two ways to rename devices. Thanks! Sure glad to find that function; I've had to rely upon my dealer for name edits. That feature will save a lot of time (and expense). 

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11 minutes ago, EdE said:

Very creative!... thanks for sharing. It also led me to one of your previous posts that listed driver developers...which identified at least two ways to rename devices. Thanks! Sure glad to find that function; I've had to rely upon my dealer for name edits. That feature will save a lot of time (and expense). 

Great stuff.  The renamer driver is very useful!

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  • 3 weeks later...
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