Overview

Schedule your lights and electronics

Using EventGhost and SunTracker plugin

You probably want to turn your lights on at sunset and off at sunrise (and perhaps change color mode on the TV or projector) but doing it manually by clicking a button on your HTPC will get old. Telldus' scheduler software won't handle it but there's a few third-party applications that can. I'll be using EventGhost with SunTracker plugin.

1. Install EventGhost.
2. Add the Tellstick and SunTracker plugins (comes with EventGhost) to Autostart.
    
   In the SunTracker Plugin Item settings you can set your latitude and longitude. SunTracker will use this information to calculate sunset and sunrise to trigger the on and off events. Location, Country and City will be used for looking up Google weather data and apply weather compensation. Holidays will be using Saturdays schedule. During the summer season you can have extra time compensation and there’s a vacation mode.
   
   The Currently Active SunTrackers box will list the active SunTracker schedules created in step 3 below. You will most likely need just one SunTracker schedule.
3. Add Action -> SunTracker -> Start new or control running SunTracker to Autostart.
    
   In the SunTracker Action Item settings you set the name of the event that SunTracker should trigger. You may set fixed times when the lights should go on and off. The Moving Ghost function will randomly turn your light on and off during night to confuse burglars
   
   SunTracker will start creating events on sunrise, sunset and your predefined times once this action is added. In this case it will be called Main.Electronics ON (or OFF)(be sure to uncheck Log only assigned and activated events).
    
4. Add two macros: Add Macro > TellStick >Turn on and Turn off. These will send the on and off commands to the remote socket and should be triggered by SunTracker.
    
   Select a TellStick macro and press F5 to manually test the macro and verify that the lights turn on and off. You can have as many receivers as you want on the same channel so one TellStick macro can control all your lights if you’d like.      
5. Drag the SunTracker events (Main.Electronics ON and OFF) from the log window and drop it on the *TellStick macro*s. The SunTracker event is triggered a short moment after the action is added or when starting EventGhost. It's possible to manually create or rename an event if you'd not like to wait for sunrise or sunset to trigger it. The next time the SunTracker event is triggered, it will run the TellStick macro and turn the lights on or off.

Configuration

This is what the EventGhost configuration looks like so far:

There’s lots more help to get about configuring EventGhost at their forums.

Walter, the author of SunTracker, gives an example of how it could be set up:
 

A typical use-case could look like this:
During weekdays, Monday through Thursday, it would be that

• the outdoor lamp is turned ON every morning at "0600"
•  it is then turned OFF at sunrise
• it is turned ON again at sunset
• finally, it's turned OFF later in the evening, like "2300" 
  On Friday evenings it would not be turned OFF, instead this happens Saturday night at "0200" (because the kids always arrive home much later during weekends). For Saturday we do not turn ON the light at all in the morning, everybody is sleeping anyway... Later in the evening, it is turned ON at sunset. The same procedure as for Friday, it's turned OFF at "0200" Sunday night. On Sundays, finally, the same morning and evening procedure as during Saturdays with the exception that the lights are turned OFF in the evening at "2300".
  During Vacation when the house is empty and you are dancing in Ibiza, another pattern could be applicable...
  Then there are public holidays. You have fixed ones and you have variable ones (that change every year). So this you need to maintain yearly. The logic in handling holidays is as follows:
• if today is a normal weekday and tomorrow is a holiday, use time settings for Friday
•  if today and tomorrow are holidays, use time settings for Saturday
• if today is a holiday and tomorrow normal weekday, use time settings for Sunday
  Also it makes no sense to turn on lights if they are going to be turned OFF shortly anyway . Here you have a setting where you define the minimum ON period left to be required.
  If you like, you can specify an offset in minutes for ON/OFF events. A negative offset, as example -45, results in that the ON event is created the specified number of minutes (in this example 45 minutes) BEFORE the actual sunset happens. The OFF event will occur the same amount of minutes AFTER the actual sunrise. This function is much appreciated when you like to control indoor lights since it's normally getting a bit darker earlier inside than outside. A positive offset works the reverse way. It creates the ON event specified number of minutes AFTER the actual sunset. The OFF event will occur the same amount of minutes BEFORE the actual sunrise. This function can be used in cases where you think that there is still enough light from the sun also a period of time after the actual sunset and before the sunrise. It depends on your actual location.

Another use is to connect a projector to the HTPC with a RS232 cable and let SunTracker trigger a color mode change by using EventGhost’s Serial Port plugin. The projector changes to Cinema Night color mode when the sun sets. During the day it’ll change back to Bright mode by EventGhost.