Reply To: Sleep Timer

It would be nice to be able to turn on music or television at a programmed time without user initiation. A simple day of the week and time selector to execute a sequence could do it. With this feature we could set music or news to come on in the morning as an alarm or after we wake, or when we arrive home, etc. Are there any plans to incorporate this feature into Roomie?

Can anyone please tell me if roomie has a sleep timer feature? I posted the same question on Facebook but thought I might have better luck on here. I'm seriously considering returning my Logitech Link and investing in roomie.

Thanks in advance.

+1 sleep timer would make this app complete

Agree with this request. Having the app lock the phone is awkward - force one to unlock iPhone first before changing channel or volume. On the other hand, setting the app to "never lock" drains the battery really fast. What would be perfect is a sleep feature that dims the screen and puts the app into low-power mode, though without locking the phone, and then turns it on as soon as someone picks it up...

This has been mentioned before, but this is definitely a feature that my Harmony 900 has that I will miss if I ditch it to exclusively run Roomie in my home.

+1 The ability to create a timer activity would be awesome. I guess the real question would be if IOS supports a timer event that could activate the roomie app and run a command after a certain period of time...

Hey everybody. I've been using Roomie about 2 weeks now and LOVE IT. Replacing Harmony remotes. My system has 6 rooms with a mix of native IP control and a few IP2IR boxes including lighting control.

One of the features I had on my Harmony remotes was the ability to set a "sleep" countdown timer. This is useful when you are laying in bed, you know you are going to fall asleep within 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes (whatever timeout you select) and you want your system to completely power down automatically after that time elapses.

Ideally, I was thinking this would be something you could enable by editing the particular activity and turning on the option. Once you do that, a smaller button would appear to the right of the activity. Most often the activity you would use this with would be System Off but why restrict it to just that? Anyway if the user clicks that button (probably a ZZZ icon or something) Roomie would prompt for the sleep timer, 5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 60 min, 120 min, or custom. Click done and it will execute that activity (usually system off) when that time elapses.

Anyway that's my suggestion. Keep up the GREAT WORK! This thing is awesome and actually really fun to set up!

 

Best,

Dustin

Los Angeles, CA

Merged several sleep threads together here.

Would it be possible to have some type of scheduler that could turn on system at a given time?

I would also like to be able to program my system to turn on and wake me up in the morning.

This app needs a sleep timer for those of us with Projectors who want to save their lamp life

Timer function in general would be awesome. I can think of many uses such as turning lights on and off, sleep timer, camera control. Let's do it!

Yes Please!

Merged more threads to here.

I don't see where this feature request was included in 2.0. VERY DISAPPOINTING! if you peruse the forums, you'll see this functionality requested multiple times since the last post in this thread.

 

When will a timed turn-on/turn-off/alarm clock function be added??

We recognize this is a desired feature. We have never committed to a release for this, but in general this is a likely future feature. For 2.0, we simply had to get it out ASAP for iOS 7 support.

Thank you.

Thank you for your response and acknowledgement. Your product is an excellent one and I look forward to future improvements.

Actually, what would be nice is a new class of object, something like activities, but executed based upon external event. Examples would be timers, Global Cache sensor inputs, etc. Then you could create entries under this class for the given events and enter actions when the event occurs.

This post should probably be here as well.

feature-requests-archives/timer-function-t9854.html

Just want to add i think the next evolution of roomie to set it apart from everyone else would be voice commands and timers. That would make it incredibly powerful home automation system with roomies simpleness and user friendly setup.

I watched some home automation videos on youtube, and alot of android users use things like automagic and autovoice to do things like this, but it looked difficult and i missed roomies simplicity. Some pretty cool setups.

One thing I would like to add to this is if roomie could excute events based on conditions, i think thats what the poster above me is suggesting. One home automation system using android I noticed allowed execution of events based on when his phone joins his home network. It was really cool, as he pulled up to his house and his cell phone was in range lights turned on, tv came on, music came on, basically an activity was excuted. I assume adding something like this to roomie wouldnt be to hard, but would open up a world of possibilities.

Timed commands are part of Roomie 2.1. You set a time, commands execute at that time, choose which days, combine with sounds, run Activities, snooze alarm, etc.

Timers are not part of 2.1. That would be like a generic "execute in 30 minutes".

We've never seen voice control of AV equipment executed well. When we feel we have a good model to work towards, we're interested in that. Until then, the idea of speaking to your AV equipment while the death star is blowing up at 120 decibels seems comically non-functional. "VOLUME DOWN! VOLUME DOWN!! ARGH WHY DOESN'T IT UNDERSTAND ME WHEN I CAN'T EVEN HEAR MYSELF TALK!" Sure, it's sensible from a generic home automation perspective of "I'm home, turn the lights on" and that's a somewhat secondary feature level for us.

Roomie 2.1 does have some additional super cool conditions upon which it bases command execution, and those will be announced soon.

Thank you.

Thats great to hear about roomie 2.1!

I understand your points about voice control. You make a strong point about your concerns. I did notice smart things home automation hub included voice commands in their new app, not sure how it works though but they were hyping it as a selling point at ces. Although I dont think that does things like avr volume either.

I was also looking at droid moto x and how much love thats getting about the always on voice control, and apparently more google products might incorporate it. So i looked to see what apple was doing and all i could find was a dock patent submitted about always listening. I was just thinking it would be cool to yell activities (from a marketing standpoint for roomie as well) and it execute the activity, the tony stark house.... I seen a few demos of android users who would say "Ok google turn off lights" and it would respond "turning off lights" and it would go off, it was pretty neat. But not nearly as user friendly as roomie to set this up. I wish apple would offer siri api.

Anyway I hope im not getting off topic or high jacking, just thought discussing the evolution of roomie was interesting and it is great to hear roomies concerns and hesitation about doing certain things as I also see where your coming from with voice control. And its great to see timed commands are included!

I would like to request though unless its impossible (from my research it should be possible but i could be wrong) roomie allow timers to run when roomie is not open. Idevices are multipurpose and i plan to create an activity to run every morning when i wake up at 7am.

I wont always remember to leave roomie open, i have many things I do on my idevice but i still want it to execute the activity. I hope this is looked into for the next update.

Also on that note, but on a lesser note (i dont want to overwhelm) beacons are really cool, but could we have proximity based automation when we simply join our network? maybe that would be to difficult for roomie to do, and it would also require not be physically open to accomplish, but i would like a turn on the lights activity to execute whenever i join my home network. This can be done with beacons i assume instead but those require additional idevices.

Those will be my last requests.

Your "Timer" request has just been implemented in Roomie with the latest 2.1 update. They call it an "alarm." You can configure the alarm to run any command, or set of commands, you can perform with your Roomie Remote currently....

Not sure if wifi connection automation is on their road map, but iBeacon support may end up being more flexible in the long run.

I tried 2.1 and it does work, but roomies app has to be open for it to work.

I am requesting the alarm run whenever i set it with roomie open or not.

Since idevices are multi purpose, im not always going to remember to leave roomie open before bed.

Unless it can be done right now without roomie open? Maybe someone can confirm and try themselves, im using a very old 3gs and getting a new phone any week now, and a ipad mini. I just havent had time to buy a new phone and work out a new deal with my carrier.

Otherwise my request is for timers to run if roomies not open. When roomies not open i just see a notification popup on my remote saying "roomie alarm" it does not actually execute an activity or do anything.

When you say open do you mean as the foreground application and your device on? What happens if your device goes into sleep after x minutes even with Roomie as the foreground app?

Like any "alarm clock app" for iOS, there is a very clearly prescribed list of things one can do when your app is in the background. These include playing a specially formatted sound (in other words, not just any sound or song), displaying a message, and a list of a few other very specific things you can continue while you're in the background. That list includes for instance a VoIP call, or playing a song. Anything beyond the approved list of things has no chance of getting approved by Apple which is why nothing on iOS executes in the background beyond those basic VoIP/play a song/download today's newspaper examples.

One way around that in the future obviously is to have Roomie Agent perform any command that goes beyond a simple alarm sound. The common use case with 2.1 is a dedicated Roomie device that is probably also serving as a clock while you're sleeping or not in the room. In the future, we'll likely add a way to have Roomie Agent serve as the backbone centralizing commands so that it's not necessary to leave Roomie running. If your primary mission is to execute commands on a time schedule, the cheapest route is a dedicated Roomie device anyway, but yes we'll likely offer an additional route via Roomie Agent.

Another piece we're considering is a Roomie Agent for iOS that might run all the way back to iOS 5 and have essentially no interface. So you could get your iPad 1 out of storage and have that as a cheap always-running Agent.

Thank you.

Just want to say thanks for clarifying.

 

Your alternatives sound like very good ideas and could basically serve as automation for your home. I really like the last suggestion, i have a cheap 3gs i could dedicate to this. I think thats a great idea, tons of people have cheap phones sitting around for ios they could use. Unless your idea wouldnt support an old 3gs, i see your no longer supporting it in september, but i dont know if this idea would apply.

I guess this is where android would be a strength over ios, i think apps can run and do things in the background.

The roomie agent idea is also cool as well but i use windows :frowning: Have wanted roomie agent for awhile but dont want to switch to mac.

Dont want to bump this post, but just want to reiterate what a great idea your second idea was having a roomie agent for ios.

I was talking with some freinds over the weekend who have older iphones and have no use for them, as a roomie user who now has has a 4s and 3s sitting around, i could essentially tuck these away and have them automate my home. Maybe the 4s could even act as a beacon.

And looking into home automation systems, roomie could essentially simplify everything as the insteon options seem to have to many moving parts and to pore of interface for what i want to do (timers, and a beacon), the only obstacle is having to have roomie always open, but if i could stick an old iphone or two in the house to always run as a roomie agent, that would solve every issue and be incredibly cost effective.