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Analog Light Photo Cell Sensor Start


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Posted

Sure would be nice to have a way to start your show at the perfect day light condition. If I had a way to hook up analog photo sensor I could count for clouds and other weather conditions and start my animation at a perfect time without me having to guess what time to start the scheduler.

Posted

Zane wrote:

Sure would be nice to have a way to start your show at the perfect day light condition. If I had a way to hook up analog photo sensor I could count for clouds and other weather conditions and start my animation at a perfect time without me having to guess what time to start the scheduler.

If you are using the standalone animation mode then this would be easy, all you would have to do is make a circuit with the sensor act like a switch and plug it into the board as a switch input.
Posted

You can use a power-on sequence, then hook your LOR up to a photocell sensor.

This is what I use for my "non-holiday" lights for most of the year. Once I get into animation-season, then I use the scheduler.

It would be nice to have a sunrise-sunset formula in the scheduler software.

Of course, that doesnt take into account those days when it gets dark 30 minutes earlier because it's overcast.

If you're doing a "show", I still think it's better to schedule by the clock so people know when to stop by (or avoid the neighborhood alltogether).

Posted

I wonder if there is some sort of X10 photo sensor? You could use a computer interface and write a macro / batch file that would start the show I bet.

Posted

vanlohd wrote:

I wonder if there is some sort of X10 photo sensor? You could use a computer interface and write a macro / batch file that would start the show I bet.


The X10.com Activehome software has a sunrise-sunset calculator built in and their outdoor motion/photocell floodlights can return information about whether it's "dark" or "light"...but you need the two-way interface to retreive this information.

...although I'm not sure how you'd get LOR to fire off from a batch file...?

Is there a way to set off the show schedule from a command line?

Maybe you could use WinBatch, if nothing else.
Posted

Russ wrote:



...although I'm not sure how you'd get LOR to fire off from a batch file...?

Is there a way to set off the show schedule from a command line?

Maybe you could use WinBatch, if nothing else.


Here's what I found to work:

Start the following from the Light-O-Rama folder with a batch file:
LORTray.exe
LORMonitor.exe

LORMonitor is what seems to actually run the show - if LORTray is not loaded but LORMonitor is, the show goes on...If LORMonitor is not loaded, LORTray has "Enable Shows" available. If LORMonitor is loaded, LORTray has "Disable Shows" available.

At the end of the night, you can stop the show using a program from the M$ resource kit in a batch file. Just google Kill.exe.

Kill LORMonitor.exe
Kill LORTray.exe

This will terminate the LORMonitor program & stop the show! Next time LORMonitor is started, the show should start within seconds. I'm not sure if a schedule is needed.
Posted

Great info!

If I wasn't in scramble mode right now to get my first LOR show up by Thanksgiving I'd take the time to work on this. :D

On the to-do list this week is to rebuild a PC that will be dedicated solely to LOR and home automation (mostly X10 and a variety of security cameras).

After the show is up and running I'll see if there isn't a better way to get this done.

Of course...I wonder if you left the LOR scheduler running 24/7, but used an X10 appliance module to turn on/off the controller unit.

Turning off isn't a problem, but if you turn the controller on (while the scheduler is already running), does the scheduler have to "discover" the controller ID? Or would it simply start sending commands to the controller...?

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