What am I doing wrong in this Custom Alert ??

[elagache]

Dear WeatherCat tinkerers,

I had created a custom alert for my Outdoor cooling potential synthetic channel, but had never gotten around to writing one for when to close the windows.  So I went ahead and created a custom rule and an AppleScript to generate the Growl notification.  Well, the time came to close the windows and no alert.  The alert definitely didn't trigger since I have it set to send the email and no email was sent either.

Here is the custom alert:



All I'm trying to do is make sure that the alert is triggered only when the temperatures are warming and thus the Outdoor cooling potential is decreasing and this 3 test technique has worked fine for me on other custom alerts.

I found something else odd.  I wanted to test if the rule was correct and ran into an odd problem.  Given this rule I would need a test temperature less than 1.  However, when I tried to enter a number less then 1 into the test section, it would force the number back into an integer.  Here is my attempt to entire a real number:



When I try to enter a rate of change this is what happens to me:



The 0.1 is changed into a 0.

Since I couldn't get real values into the test, I changed the custom alert so that the range was between 2-0 and used 1 as my test value.  The test didn't return true even if my rate of change should have caused the alert to trigger.

So I'm confused.   Do I have the logic flipped somehow?  Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Cheers, Edouard 

[WCDev]

Congrats Edouard - that's a bug in the tester in V2.0 (it's all new) - the alert processing isn't though, so I'm guessing the value jumped straight through your window. Tester will be [edit: is] fixed in next release - should make it easier to test/figure it out (try -1 for the delta).

[Blicj11]

Edouard, when Stu tweaks the tester, please post again. I am using the other half of your soon-to-be-matched set and I want to use this half too. Otherwise, my windows will be stuck open.

[elagache]

Howdy Stu and WeatherCat tinkerers,

Congrats Edouard - that's a bug in the tester in V2.0 (it's all new)

Phew! - that sure looked plenty weird! 

the alert processing isn't though, so I'm guessing the value jumped straight through your window. Tester will be [edit: is] fixed in next release - should make it easier to test/figure it out (try -1 for the delta).

Well, it went right through the alert again this morning.  So I'll widen the interval and see if I can it to trigger tomorrow morning.

Thanks Stu!   

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Howdy WeatherCat tinkerers,

Finally this alert triggered as it was supposed to and my AppleScript Growl notification finally got a chance to display on queue.  However, I did a quick calculation and realized I was just lucky this morning.  Stu was 100% correct, my temperature range was much too narrow.  Even so, I had only widened the window to 0.5˚ F.  However, this morning the temperature was rising at over 7˚ F per hour.  Since my WeatherCat install is sampling every 5 minutes, the temperature was increasing by 0.58˚ F per every 5 minute interval.  So it still could have jumped completely over my interval.  Since the rate of climb could be even more drastic on very hot days, I guess I should nudge my interval even wider.

Interesting lesson about how to configure these custom alerts.

Cheers, Edouard 

[Blicj11]

Edouard:

I have been playing around with this as well. There is a button for testing a custom alert. When I open that test window and enter data that will trigger the alert, I can get it to trigger the alert but it won't email me. When I press the Email Test button, nothing happens. I receive other alerts (not custom) for things like freeze warning, etc. What do I need to check to see why the custom alert won't send an email?

Thanks.

[WCDev]

The Email test button isn't wired up and won't do anything

[Blicj11]

Well, that would explain it.