Author Topic: Share Your Gages  (Read 13403 times)

elagache

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Learning the ways of A/C. (Re: Share Your Gages)
« Reply #15 on: July 13, 2014, 10:13:21 PM »
Howdy Herb and WeatherCat indoor climate engineers,

I'm not using any growler alerts, but here's my synthetic channel gage and temperatures to perform the same function. For me, it's just a delta temperature, outside minus inside, so when it goes negative, that means it's colder outside than inside. But, I'm running AC all the time now. My inside is relatively stable. I still run AC with cool ambient temperatures, because of the high humidity here this time of year. Plus, we have gnat swarms, and those little buggers can go through screen doors easily. I've got an attic fan that would be great in the Spring, except for gnats getting in. Even in full AC mode, I still get a few gnats just from coming and going.

Your climate is very different from mine, but I'm realizing there is a subtle skill in using a central air conditioner to best advantage.  For most of my life I never had this capability, so I have to learn all this anew.  Since we are in a coastal region with a lot of onshore flow most of the time, there simply aren't that many opportunities to decide how long to run the A/C.  However, I'm learning that even if the outside temperature is cooler than inside, that doesn't remotely mean that you should switch from A/C to the attic fan.  Bugs is definitely one consideration.  Another is cooling efficiency.  The air conditioner is far more efficient at removing heat than a small temperature differential.  Since sleeping is difficult above a certain temperature, there may be no way to cool the house down fast enough with outside air to avoid disturbing your sleep patterns.  Central air conditioning has one more advantage that seems trite until you lose sleep over it.  With the A/C running, the windows are closed and rooms are quiet.  Trying to sleep with the windows open means everything from wild critters to passing cars can once more disturb your sleep.

I used to be an "expert" at running the fans to cool the house without A/C, but I'm realizing quick that I'm will to pay a little extra for a good night's sleep!!  [bed]

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Blicj11

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #16 on: July 14, 2014, 04:27:47 PM »
Ooooo? Edouard! Sounds like you've got a case of runaway complexity. Better nip it! It can spread like wild fire ?

Ha ha! Herb, I love your sense of humor. I too used a third-party finder until Mavericks.

Blick, I'm having a little difficulty figuring out what you're doing there. Could you give a little explanation?

Herb, I like your one gauge solution; it's simpler than mine. I used two gauges and reversed the formula so my two gauges do not go below 0. I did it that way mainly because I was enamored with the new gauges options. I'm not using Growler either. I just have an alert set up to email me. I live up in the mountains so I don't have A/C. I want an email to remind me when to open and close the windows. Where I live, it's simple; open up when the outside temperature is lower than inside. I have no traffic but I do have a beautiful mountain stream about a hundred yards downhill and I love listening to that when I open up the windows in the evening.

I'm thinking about Growler, but I don't know anything about Apple Scripts and I don't want to pester Edouard and Randall to death to teach me.
Blick


elagache

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Growl and Applescripts are plug'n'play (Re: Share Your Gages)
« Reply #17 on: July 14, 2014, 08:27:48 PM »
Howdy Blick and WeatherCat interior climate engineers,

I'm thinking about Growler, but I don't know anything about Apple Scripts and I don't want to pester Edouard and Randall to death to teach me.

Actually you don't need to know a thing about AppleScripts to use Growl and the two AppleScripts that I supply with the synthetic channel.  All you need to do is get hold of Growl.  Here is the link for to the Mac App Store for Growl:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/growl/id467939042?mt=12

Apple claims that Growl is not available in the US store - huh? . . .   I hope it is just a glitch.  Growl costs $4 these days.

Then my AppleScripts will just run.  You can double-click them to check.  You can configure Growl to forward the messages to the OS X notifications manager if you prefer, but the OS X system doesn't like the long-winded messages of my Growl notifications - it truncates them.  I guess Apple is increasing an organization of "few words" . . . . .  [biggrin]

Once the AppleScripts do what you want, just have them launched as the action of your WeatherCat Custom Alert.  Then instead of getting an email (or in addition to) you'll get a little notification on your desktop saying when to open or close the windows.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Blicj11

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #18 on: July 14, 2014, 10:15:27 PM »
Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks. I can't remember what you are running Edouard, but I know Randall is running Mavericks. Any insight Randall?
Blick


Bull Winkus

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #19 on: July 15, 2014, 01:22:58 AM »
Didn't notice that, Blick! And, I already gave my $4. Have to give it a try anyway now. I launched it on my non-WeatherCat computer to poke around. Will play with it later.

Found a program called Dropzone 3, while fiddling with the App Store. Half price for the rest of this week at ? [ta da!] ? $4. Has actionable items, like applescripts. Is a launch bar for applications. Looks quite useful. Just set it up. I like it. Don't know about the growl like features yet. Need to convince Edouard to cough up $4 and look at it. Found this on their website concerning sandboxing.

EDIT: Oops! It was $4.99 for the app. Who looks at anything on the right side of the decimal?

Dropzone 3 Sandboxing

There are two slightly different versions of Dropzone 3 available. One is the version available on the Mac App Store which runs sandboxed and the other is the non-Mac App Store version available for download direct from our site which runs unsandboxed.

The sandboxed version available on the Mac App Store cannot write to arbitrary directories or run AppleScript. Therefore actions that do either of these things will not work under the sandboxed version.

If you'd like to run actions that are incompatible with sandboxing, there's a simple workaround: Simply download the non-Mac App Store version of Dropzone 3 from the link below. When you open this version it will detect that you already purchased Dropzone 3 on the Mac App Store and you will be automatically registered. It will also migrate your settings to this version. Note that you have to run the Mac App Store version at least once before running the non-Mac App Store version for this automatic registration and migration of settings to happen.


https://aptonic.com/dropzone3/sandboxing.php

What do you think, Blick, Edouard?
Herb

Steve

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #20 on: July 15, 2014, 06:08:11 PM »
Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks.

I've been using Growl with Mavericks since it launched launched, and it has worked flawlessly with Edouard's AppleScripts.

Steve
Steve - Avon, Ohio, USA


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Randall75

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #21 on: July 15, 2014, 08:39:04 PM »
Hi Blick
 As Steve has mention it works just fine on Mavericks


And for the reviews I don't work well with Maverick either


cheers


 [cheers1]

elagache

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The death of Growl greatly exaggerated! (Re: Share Your Gages)
« Reply #22 on: July 15, 2014, 09:22:33 PM »
Howdy Blick, Herb, Steve, Randall,  and WeatherCat fans,

Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks. I can't remember what you are running Edouard, but I know Randall is running Mavericks. Any insight Randall?

Hmm, can't run Growl on OS X Mavericks? . . . . . 

Does this answer your question!!




I don't know who is having problems with Growl, but like Steve and Randall, what I downloaded from the App Store (2.1.3) is working fine.


Found a program called Dropzone 3, while fiddling with the App Store. Half price for the rest of this week at ? [ta da!] ? $4. Has actionable items, like applescripts. Is a launch bar for applications. Looks quite useful. Just set it up. I like it. Don't know about the growl like features yet. Need to convince Edouard to cough up $4 and look at it.

. . . . .

What do you think, Blick, Edouard?

Okay, I took a quick look at the documentation, but I don't understand how it would replace AppleScripts or Growl.  I see that it claims to have some support for Twitter, that would definitely be useful since our present access to Twitter is broken.  Still I don't see anything for automation.  Am I missing something?

Looks to me if it can be used, you would want to purchase this app directly from the developer to avoid the sandbox limitations.

If you want to expand the number of things that you can send notifications for you might have a look at OmniGrowl:

http://www.woodenbrain.com/products/omnigrowl/omnigrowl.html

It provides a bridge from all sorts of services to Growl.  However, even if I did buy it, I ultimately never found it useful enough to keep using it.  Still, others might find the sort of services that it interfaces to more interesting than I did.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Bull Winkus

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #23 on: July 16, 2014, 08:01:18 AM »
Haven't had time to play with either Dropzone 3 or Growl, yet. Spent all day in the dentist's chair (well, 4 hrs anyway). Root canal and a new crown. Got visitors from out of town, tomorrow.

I did get a chance to download and review Edouard's window notification script. Nice work, Edouard! I think I can use that and adapt it to my, "Sure is a pretty day!" notification action, perhaps followed after a few more degrees of outside temperature drop by my, "Are you daft?! Go outside and play!" script.

Dropzone 3 description page.

https://aptonic.com/dropzone3/

Dropzone 3 Actions web page (Dropzone 3 uses Ruby.)

https://github.com/aptonic/dropzone3-actions/blob/master/README.md#dropzone-3-api

RubyMonk - Interactive Ruby Tutorials

https://rubymonk.com
Herb

Blicj11

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #24 on: July 16, 2014, 08:03:24 AM »
Ha ha ! Love your scripts. However, shouldn't you be in bed this time of night?
Blick


Blicj11

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Re: The death of Growl greatly exaggerated! (Re: Share Your Gages)
« Reply #25 on: July 16, 2014, 08:06:17 AM »
Does this answer your question!!

HA HA! Thank you Steve, Randall and Edouard. I am now an official believer. And unlike Randall, I run fine on Mavericks.

Now that we are over that hurdle, before I can bring myself to invest US$4 I have one more question. What about Growl-type notification on iOS, in the rare event that I can pull myself away from WeatherCat and go outside for some actual weather?
Blick


Bull Winkus

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Re: Share Your Gages
« Reply #26 on: July 16, 2014, 08:20:31 AM »


Sure was a pretty day, Tuesday!

 [biggrin] OK. I'm going, Blick! G'nite all!
Herb

elagache

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Dropzone can't talk to WeatherCat it appears. (Re: Share Your Gages)
« Reply #27 on: July 16, 2014, 09:16:08 PM »
Hi Herb and WeatherCat tinkerers,

Dropzone 3 Actions web page (Dropzone 3 uses Ruby.)

I made a quick pass over those docs and I didn't see any way to connect it to Weathercat.  As far as I can tell, all you can do is create complex actions that are started by dragging something on to the Dropzone or when you click on the zone.  That's a perfectly reasonable thing for this program to do, but that doesn't help us automate anything with respect to WeatherCat.  At least that's all I see here.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

elagache

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There is Prowl. (Re: Growl - Share Your Gages)
« Reply #28 on: July 16, 2014, 09:19:50 PM »
Hi Blick and WeatherCat iOS fans,

Now that we are over that hurdle, before I can bring myself to invest US$4 I have one more question. What about Growl-type notification on iOS, in the rare event that I can pull myself away from WeatherCat and go outside for some actual weather?

Actually there is a Growl client for iOS called Prowl:

http://www.prowlapp.com/

It looks like a very interesting iOS tool.  Alas, I've never had a chance to install and play with it.  I'll try to shoe-horn some time between . . . . all the other things I need to juggle! . . . .

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]