Easiest way to accomplish this?

[PrivatePilot]

With the advent of the ability to setup custom alerts for any channel on the new versions of WC I'd like to use the output of my second aux channel (which monitors the temp of my hot tub) to control a Wemo remote control.   The thermostat on the hot tub is becoming a bit problematic/coarse, so despite being set to maintain the water at 40c it sometimes dips to 38 before turning on the heating element, and then often overshoots to 42 before turning off.

The proper way to fix it would be to get the thermostat control replaced.  The geeky way is to have WC control the power to the hot tub via a Wemo instead.       Basically, I want to setup a rule that states "if aux temp 2 drops below 39.5 do X", and alternately, "if aux temp 2 rises above 40.1 do X"

The "X" would be something that triggers the wemo module to cycle on or off.   

The Wemo units integrate nicely with IFTTT, so I have a multitude of options available to me for taking some sort of output from my mac and translating it to a on/off trigger for the Wemo unit - Twitter or email would do the job, for that matter.  I have a private twitter account that I used to use for a similar automation setup which could be used with keywords to trigger the Wemo.

That said, I'm stumbling at the "Perform the following actions/launch" in WC.  I'm guessing I'd want to program something in Applescript to launch upon trigger to quietly send a tweet or an email (or something else that integrates with IFTTT) in order to ultimately control the Wemo unit, but my Applescript skills are slim to none.

Any ideas?

[elagache]

Dear Private Pilot and WeatherCat tinkerers,

With the advent of the ability to setup custom alerts for any channel on the new versions of WC I'd like to use the output of my second aux channel (which monitors the temp of my hot tub) to control a Wemo remote control.

   . . . . . Beware of what you try to do . . . . you just might get stuck with it! 

The proper way to fix it would be to get the thermostat control replaced.

In a suitable Bugs Bunny voice: . . . . . . Nah, could be!   

 

The geeky way is to have WC control the power to the hot tub via a Wemo instead.       Basically, I want to setup a rule that states "if aux temp 2 drops below 39.5 do X", and alternately, "if aux temp 2 rises above 40.1 do X"

The "X" would be something that triggers the wemo module to cycle on or off.   

The Wemo units integrate nicely with IFTTT, so I have a multitude of options available to me for taking some sort of output from my mac and translating it to a on/off trigger for the Wemo unit - Twitter or email would do the job, for that matter.  I have a private twitter account that I used to use for a similar automation setup which could be used with keywords to trigger the Wemo.

I wasn't aware of IFTTT.  If there are other WeatherCat types who are curious, there is a brief Wikipedia article on it:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFTTT

The main IFTTT website is here:

https://ifttt.com/

It seems to me the simplest thing for you to do is to use WeatherCat's custom alert feature and have those custom alerts send emails to a IFTTT recipe.  The only problem with that is that would force you to use the WeatherCat email address only for IFTTT.  If you using WeatherCat emails for something else, you can still make this work by setting up some automatic rules on your email client or web email service provider.  Use an easily recognizable email for the requests to turn the heater on and off, and have some email filtering rule forward the email to IFTTT.

If you go that route, you don't need to do any programming and you can test the setup by sending emails to see if the heater turns on and off.  Everything would be handled through a nice Mac user-interface.

The only catch I think is that you need to be running the WeatherCat 2.0 Beta to get access to your auxiliary channel in a custom alert.  I don't remember if WeatherCat 1.x has all those channels available in a custom alert.  The Beta is running fine, so if you haven't upgraded, certainly feel free to do so.  Then you can have your rules such as custom alerts and away you go!

However, you are probably still better off to replace the thermostat!!

Cheers, Edouard 

[Blicj11]

I've been using  IFTTT for a while now, with mixed results. Sometimes the IFTTT formulae work and sometime they don't. I've not thought about using it with WeatherCat but is an intriguing idea.

[PrivatePilot]

If you go that route, you don't need to do any programming and you can test the setup by sending emails to see if the heater turns on and off.  Everything would be handled through a nice Mac user-interface.

I'm running the beta version.  The non beta versions does not allow this, no...but alerts for aux channels was high on my list of wants and now it exists.

So..I'm exploring the email option now.  I had wanted to avoid using it as I expected it to be clunky, but it appears that there's a Gmail channel on IFTTT, and further to that, it appears that there's some ability to manage triggers on IFTTT via keywords within the email in question.  So, I've programmed IFTTT to only act upon emails received with a hashtag keyword in it and am testing now.

[PrivatePilot]

Ok...after some testing with another Wemo unit that controls a floodlight for my pool deck, it appears that using email with a secret hashtagged keyword actually works perfectly with IFTTT to trigger the Wemo unit on and off.  Other emails from WC shouldn't be effected as they won't contain the secret keyword that triggers the IFTTT recipe.

I might have been overthinking this when in reality the email option works perfectly. 

[Bull Winkus]

Yaaaay! I love when a plan comes together!

  discussion to say the least.

I dont know anything about your thermostat, but most commercial thermostats have a deadband adjustment to tighten/loosen the difference between turn on and turn off. However, there's got to be some deadband and the tightest may still be more than you want.

[PrivatePilot]

Fixing the thermostat wouldn't be particularly difficult, but going this route offers some automation options that wouldn't otherwise exist - like being able to remotely control the tub from my iPhone.   In the winter when I sometimes lower the temperature for periods when we aren't expecting to use the tub, controlling it with a WeMo would allow me to trigger the tub to come back up to temperatures while (for example) still at work but knowing we will be using the tub later in the evening.