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Topic:
Weirdness: MX1200 Timer Events & Alias Conditions
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Post 1 made on Wednesday October 19, 2016 at 16:05
Tundera
Lurking Member
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September 2015
6
So I have an MX1200 program that's been running fine for years which includes a multitude of timer events. I went a little complex with the program. The timer events are for the RF Lutron dimmers for turning lights on and off for weekdays, weekends, etc, and allows a global "off" and "holiday timer" to turn the normal timers off and turn on a special timer just for holidays where the timer deviates basically an "on all day" settings.

Here's how it works: The Timer configs require an alias to be specified from the drop down. Instead of selecting the actual scene button that keys to the RF code as the alias I created soft keys on an invisible screen. Each simply has a conditional: if the right timer variables are true, alias to the right scene selection button on the light's real screen to run the RF command, else do nothing.

For years, this has worked.

A few weeks ago I was setting up a new main laptop and connected the remote to it to download the current program from the remote to the laptop. I uploaded nothing to the remote. Suddenly after that the timer events were not occurring.

So I restored an older backup of the script onto the remote. The timer events still did not occur.

Assuming that "something" went wrong when I connected the remote to the new laptop, I pulled the battery and pulled out another MX1200 that had the same program loaded onto it about 2 years ago. That one ALSO did not activate the timers! It hasn't been touched and sat without the battery for 2 years. The laptop didn't "break" anything on it.

So I sat down for a while and did some hard troubleshooting. What I found is this: If I set the Timer alias to the conditionals, the timer DOES activate when it should (the screen turns itself on), but it does nothing. I assumed this meant that the variable states were not correct. So I put two different commands on either side of the conditional (if the variable is set to enable that timer's event, turn the light off, else dim it 50%) - the timer activated....the light stayed full bright. For some reason, suddenly on two remotes, one with the current program version one with a 2 year old version, the conditional aliases for timers are not actually running when triggered. Neither the condition nor the else actually runs the alias to the scene mode. Which stated spontaneously. I tried setting the "conditional" alias to just directly use the RF command instead of aliasing the light's main screen, incase the alias->alias was an issue. It still did nothing.

After much testing back and forth, the result is conclusive: If I point to the soft alias conditionals, they do not seem to run at all even though the timer does try to activate. If I point the timer event directly at the "scene' aliases on the light's actual screen, it works normally.

So I "broke" the fancy on/off configurable timers that I built and just pointed all the timers to the actual scene aliases on the light's page. And it's been working fine again since.

Anyone else have any really weird timer experience with the MX1200? Or any explanation why the remotes, including the one last updated 2 years ago sitting in a box, would suddenly not be able to activate conditional aliases from a timer event?

(Aside, I also wonder why a $900 MAP remote control seems to have a clock that gains about 5 minutes a week while a $15 Timex manages just fine... but that's a different thread! :P )

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