Executing an Action "Manually" at Different Times

[eggzlot]

So I have some a small patch of my patio and stairs heated so the ice/snow melts and its easier to take the dog out quickly.  That said they should go on a few hours before the start of the precip to warm up the surface area.  They work via some high voltage conversion to end of day a regular C4 switch.

Using Alan's weather driver I can control the stairs but his driver only allows for "total accumulation" for the present day, for the past hour and expected accumulation for the day.  So I cannot program it off that driver to turn on ~3 hours prior to the snow starting.

My wife and I are ok with "manually" turning it on ~3-4 hours prior especially because of COVID we are home most of the time so its easy.  But when the snow is coming at 8am we'd like to turn it on a 4am but we are not awake.  Is there a way with an experience button or something I can interact with the T3 or mobile apps to "turn it on" at a pre defined time as a 1 off event within the next 24 hours?

Example as above, before we go to sleep hit something so it turns the heated stairs at 4am.  next time it may be they turn on at 2am, other times it starts to snow mid day and we can just handle it normal as we wake up and nothing fancy is needed, just press the regular switch on.  So this is really when we do not want to leave it on overnight (cost savings and safety reasons) but we want it to start doing some warming up a bit before we wake up but the specific time would change based on the weather report we get before we go to sleep.

Hope this makes sense.

[HRT]

You can have an experience button called auto snow melt. which on could turn a variable true and when off false. Set up scheduled events for on (4am) off (whatever time). Then under the 4am scheduled event if the variable is true turn on heater. At the off time turn heater off and reset variable to false so you will have to turn it back on if you want it to work the next morning. Having the time dynamic is a little harder, unless you have a weather driver that you could program off of the forecast. I am not aware of one, but if you had one you could do a number variable with each number being equal to an hour in middle of the night. So if forecast has snow starting at 3am you can make that 1 on the variable to start warming at 1am. Then make scheduled events for each hour checking first the variable that auto timer is on, then nest the is equal to that time and if so turn on heater.

I'd personally just have the auto button to start at 4am since that's probably enough time to melt the snow even if it started at 1am or so. 

 

[eggzlot]

48 minutes ago, HRT said:

You can have an experience button called auto snow melt. which on could turn a variable true and when off false. Set up scheduled events for on (4am) off (whatever time). Then under the 4am scheduled event if the variable is true turn on heater. At the off time turn heater off and reset variable to false so you will have to turn it back on if you want it to work the next morning. Having the time dynamic is a little harder, unless you have a weather driver that you could program off of the forecast. I am not aware of one, but if you had one you could do a number variable with each number being equal to an hour in middle of the night. So if forecast has snow starting at 3am you can make that 1 on the variable to start warming at 1am. Then make scheduled events for each hour checking first the variable that auto timer is on, then nest the is equal to that time and if so turn on heater.

I'd personally just have the auto button to start at 4am since that's probably enough time to melt the snow even if it started at 1am or so. 

 

thanks - actually got an idea from @msgreenfto use the wake up agent.  So for now I am going that route as I can turn it on anytime I want within a 5 min window.  Never used the wake up agent before so it was kind of a mystery to me but took me all of 5 mins to get it up and running.