Enable something between certain times only

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  • Kevin
    Moderator
    • Jan 2004
    • 558

    Enable something between certain times only

    I have some connections that I only want to function at certain times say between 9AM and 5PM. So I was looking at how best to do this and wanted to check I was on the right track...

    At the moment I am intending passing each connection through an AND function the other half of which is 'on' during this time. Thus I was going to create a virtual output (relay) that was switched on at 9AM and off at 5pm for the other half.

    Currently during testing however I need the states to set correctly so my initial approach was doing this by repeated 'on's from the scheduler after 9AM every minute for 8 hours and repeated off's outside this.If I don't have these repeats the states aren't set of course as the logic functions evaluate based on state changes. Once Cortex is there 24/7 the repeated aspect is not an issue but maybe sensible say every hour or something. I was also concerned what happens when Cortex restarts say after an update and a scheduled event has passed, do the states of virtual devices get set back up again correctly to those immediately before the update ? I assume no 'catch up' is performed on any missed scheduled events. Just thinking maybe I could even take this timed output straight to the logic gate rather than via a virtual relay.

    I'm also considering a second way by using the pulsed on function of a relay set to the required time of 8 hours , and triggering this at 9AM which seems far better. Is this the most sensible approach ? Again will a pulsed output on a virtual device retain its period over a software update or a restart ? I also keep looking at the 'operating times' qualifiers although I can't think of an easy way to use that to help here .

    Lastly I was thinking how useful it would be to have just an 'display indicator' device that just had an input and an ability to display two icons, one for on and one for off...and for these icons to be able to be custom images of the users choice (many different ones for different devices) . In this way custom icons be added for almost any output in Cortex rather than my current method of replacing a couple of existing icons in a device.

    K
    Last edited by Kevin; 7 September 2008, 11:56 PM.
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