Introducing Apilio's native time conditions

[Anna]

Hi everyone!

Today we are introducing our first native time conditions! We know this has been requested many times and was long overdue, so, finally, you’ll be able to start setting up time conditions within Apilio

Timeframe conditions in Apilio

In this first release you’ll be able to setup timeframes for your automations so you can make sure your logicblocks can only run on a specific schedule. For example:

• If your living room fan should turn on given a specific indoor temperature, but only during specific times of the day
• If you only want to turn on lights automatically when you are getting home, but only on specific days of the week
• If you want to limit the times of the day when your heater is turned on, but only during specific months of the year.

1. It’s a day of the week

Choose one or a few days of the week when your logic is allowed to run.

2. It’s between X and Y times

For example, you can setup:

• Between 10:05 AM and 5:23 PM

3. Advanced setup with cron expressions

Cron time conditions - Intro and how to set them up

With our release of time conditions, we wanted to stay true to our tinkering roots and add an advanced time condition configuration through cron expressions. If you are familiar with these: this is exciting, right ? And if you have never heard about them, don’t worry, as you can read more about them below and you’ll be using them in no time! What’s a cron expression? [image] A cron expression is a string that represents a schedule when you want to execute a routine. For example in…

Using the new time conditions

These new conditions work similar to our current conditions, but you won’t have to setup any variables: just choose your time condition with the different time pickers and add a name to your condition. Once the time condition is created, you’ll be able to use it in any logicblock.
Here’s a detailed article with step-by-step instructions to set these up:

How to setup and use time conditions

In Apilio, you can setup time conditions to control when your actions are allowed to run. Conditions are the rules in your Logicblocks (your routines). Time Conditions are particularly handy as they allow you to reliably schedule automated activities at home or at work. Let’s see how you can set these Conditions up: What’s a Time Condition? Time Conditions relate to times of the day, the week, the month or the year, so they restrict the times when a specific logic can be run. Time events an…

You can combine multiple conditions using the simple AND or use the complex condition linking or the cron expression if you want to get really specific.

What’s not ready yet

These conditions are not “triggering”: the logicblock is not evaluated at the start of the timeframe specified, but we have plans to make this an option you can control, as well as introducing new native time triggers!

Time control is going to get very interesting in following releases, so watch this space

In this image: actual representation of an Apilio user setting up his time conditions.

[Drivingforce]

Thanks, works great especially Cron
and I was just about to make a couple of suggestions but read your post again and realised you already had them covered in future release

[Anna]

The cron setup is pretty powerful I’m a big fan!