Scheduling Automatic Feeding Power Heads on Control 4

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ajl

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I got the Control 4 and things are mostly working well, but I have been stymied on how to schedule my power heads to turn OFF for automatic feeding. All the controls seem to be set to turn it I put my powerhead on a power strip outlet then tried these:
  1. Turning on an midnight for N hours:min and running all day (pump never turned on, though maybe it would at midnight tonight)
  2. Setting up a pretend feeder and having my powerhead turn off when the feeder is on with a minimum off time of 8 minutes. (It only turned off for a few seconds while the feeder was "running")
  3. Scheduling a mode change. It doesn't seem to be possible to do this, but that would be great -- I'd just schedule it to go into feeding mode just before my feeder triggers (currently an eheim standalone)
  4. Creating a generic output called "Feed" rather than a feeder and scheduling it for a specific time, then setting the powerhead to be On when Off. In this case the feed mode never turned anything on. Not sure what the schedule was doing.
I am open to other ideas, but I couldn't really figure out how to do this so am sticking with the SmartLife app controls for now.
 
SOLVED!

It turns out that the 4th option works, but you can't have in input that you don't use. Instead, change it to have 0 inputs, and set it to turn on at whatever schedule you need. In my case from 14:32 - 14:40. Note the 0 input count and simple schedule:
Screen Shot 2020-12-06 at 11.56.57 AM.png


Then create a generic pump output on a wifi plug that is dependent on this input, and Off when On. This way you "invert the feed" mode to turn the pump off when the feeding is happening. Here is the Return Pump:
Screen Shot 2020-12-06 at 11.59.04 AM.png


So, it was a bit confusing that the input count being 1 and not used would change this, as I think one unused input is the same as 0 inputs, but having overcome that it went pretty easily. Now I can decide which modes I want to have my return pumps on for (e.g. not during water change) and automate away!
 

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