Schedex

Scheduler for node-red which allows you to enter on/off times as 24hr clock (e.g. 01:10) or suncalc events (e.g. goldenHour). It also allows you to offset times and randomise the time within the offset.

Inspired by Pete Scargill's BigTimer

NOTE: When upgrading from versions prior to 1.0.0, you will see a message for each Schedex node in the Node-RED debug window. This message is to advise that the Schedex configuration changed slightly in version 1.0.0 in order to accomodate days of the week when scheduling. To remedy, simply edit each Schedex node, tick the days of the week you want Schedex enabled and re-deploy.

Installation

This node requires node 10.x+. It's tested against 10.22.0.

$ cd ~/.node-red
$ npm install node-red-contrib-schedex

Configuration

Schedule

The scheduling days allow you to choose which days of the week to schedule events. Unticking all days will suspend scheduling.

Suspending scheduling

The 'Suspend scheduling' checkbox allows you to disable time scheduling. If scheduling is suspended, Schedex will only generate output events upon receipt of input 'on' and 'off' events (see below).

This setting is provided for the situation where you temporarily don't want time based activation and don't want to rewire your Node-RED flow.

Note that scheduling is suspended if you do not enter an on or off time in the node configuration.

Times

Note that on and off times are independent. You only need to configure one or the other or both. You can leave the on or off time field blank in the node configuration and no output will be emitted.

The times can be a 24 hour time or a suncalc event:

Time	Description
00:00 ... 23:59	24hr time
sunrise	sunrise (top edge of the sun appears on the horizon)
sunriseEnd	sunrise ends (bottom edge of the sun touches the horizon)
goldenHourEnd	morning golden hour (soft light, best time for photography) ends
solarNoon	solar noon (sun is in the highest position)
goldenHour	evening golden hour starts
sunsetStart	sunset starts (bottom edge of the sun touches the horizon)
sunset	sunset (sun disappears below the horizon, evening civil twilight starts)
dusk	dusk (evening nautical twilight starts)
nauticalDusk	nautical dusk (evening astronomical twilight starts)
night	night starts (dark enough for astronomical observations)
nadir	nadir (darkest moment of the night, sun is in the lowest position)
nightEnd	night ends (morning astronomical twilight starts)
nauticalDawn	nautical dawn (morning nautical twilight starts)
dawn	dawn (morning nautical twilight ends, morning civil twilight starts)

Offsets

The on and off time can have an offset. This is specified in minutes:

• -ve number brings the time forward. E.g. if the time is dusk and offset is -60, a message will be generated 60 minutes before dusk.
• +ve number delays the time by the specified number of minutes

Randomisation of times

Both on and off times can be randomised by ticking "Use random time within offset period". For example, if you specify dusk with an offset of -60 minutes, every day a message will be generated at a random time in a 60 minute window before dusk.

Message passthrough

When Passthrough unhandled messages is enabled, any message that isn't explicitly handled by Schedex will be immediately emitted. To clarify, if the input payload does not match any one of the programmatic options above, along with the on|off|toggle|info|info_local commands, the message will be sent to output.

With Passthough unhandled messagesdisabled (the default), any message that isn't handled by Schedex will be dropped and an error reported.

Inputs

You can wire inject nodes to the input of this node and send the following in msg.payload.

msg.payload	Description
on	Triggers manual on mode and causes Schedex to emit the configured on event. Manual mode is reset when the next on or off time is reached
off	Triggers manual off mode and causes Schedex to emit the configured off event. Manual mode is reset when the next on or off time is reached
toggle	Triggers either the manual on or manual off mode. If the last event was the on event, toggle will cause schedex to emit the off event and vice versa. State is not maintained over restarts and deploys. Schedex assumes off upon start so the first toggle will emit the on event.
info	Schedex emits an object containing the on and off times in UTC format. It also contains the state which is either on or off along with the rest of this node's configuration. Note that the output message contains the actuated state. This will be null (if an event hasn't happened yet) or 'on' or 'off'.
info_local	Emits the information exactly the same as the info command but with the on and off times in local ISO format.
send_state	Causes Schedex to emit the current state as a message with either the on or off topic/payload set. If Schedex is suspended, this command emits nothing.

Programmatic Control

This node supports programmatic time control as well as configuration via the NodeRED UI.

It is very important to note that properties set programmatically in this manner are transient. They will not persist over a NodeRED restart or redeploy!

Note that both the property-based and string-based specifications are overrides that violate the usual behavior. See here for further discussion node-red/node-red#399.

You can set the following:

Property	Type
msg.payload.suspended	Boolean: true will suspend scheduling, false will resume scheduling
msg.payload.ontime	String value as specified in the table above for time configuration
msg.payload.ontopic	String value emitted as the topic for the on event
msg.payload.onpayload	String value emitted as the payload for the on event
msg.payload.onoffset	Number value as specified above for Offset configuration
msg.payload.onrandomoffset	Boolean value as specified above in Randomisation of Times
msg.payload.offtime	String value as specified in the table above for time configuration
msg.payload.offtopic	String value emitted as the topic for the off event
msg.payload.offpayload	String value emitted as the payload for the off event
msg.payload.offoffset	Number value as specified above for Offset configuration
msg.payload.offrandomoffset	Boolean value as specified above in Randomisation of Times
msg.payload.mon	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Monday, false disables it.
msg.payload.tue	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Tuesday, false disables it.
msg.payload.wed	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Wednesday, false disables it.
msg.payload.thu	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Thursday, false disables it.
msg.payload.fri	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Friday, false disables it.
msg.payload.sat	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Saturday, false disables it.
msg.payload.sun	Boolean: true enables the schedule on a Sunday, false disables it.
msg.payload.passthroughunhandled	Boolean: true enables unhandled input messages to automatically be sent to output.

Alternatively, you can send msg.payload as a string with the following values:

Example msg.payload	Description
suspended true	true will suspend scheduling, false will resume scheduling
ontime 12:00	Time as specified in the table above for time configuration
ontopic my_topic	Sets the topic for the on event (no spaces)
onpayload my_payload	Sets the payload for the on event (no spaces)
onoffset 30	Sets the offset for the on event
onrandomoffset true	Sets the random offset for the on event
offtime dusk	Time as specified in the table above for time configuration
offtopic my_topic	Sets the topic for the off event (no spaces)
offpayload my_payload	Sets the payload for the off event (no spaces)
offoffset -30	Sets the offset for the off event
offrandomoffset false	Sets the random offset for the off event
mon false	Disables the schedule on a Monday
tue true	Enables the schedule on a Tuesday
ontime 16:30 onoffset 60 onrandomoffset true	Sets the time, offset and random offset for the on event
passthroughunhandled false	Disabled unhandled input messages automatically being sent to output

Enabling extra debugging

Install node-red-contrib-config and drag a config node into your workspace. Configure the node to set a global variable called schedex with a JSON value of {"debug": true}. Also make sure that the config tickbox for active is unchecked. Redeploy. Now click the button on the config node. This will trigger all instances of schedex to write extra logging to the os syslog next time they're invoked.