Operation Hour Counter

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Hello community,

in order to be able to trace the life of an UV lamp, I would like to implement an operating hours counter in Pimatic. The lamp is switched on and off via MQTTSwitch-Device. In a rule I want to add up the minutes/hours the lamp was on. I have tried to find a solution with the pimatic-DateTime, but I did not make any progress.
The idea is to set a variable with the current time when the lamp is turned on. When you switch it off, the content of this variable is subtracted from the current time. The difference is stored in a second variable, which is added up again and again.
Has anyone already implemented such a solution in Pimatic?

Best regards

Hi, the way you describe it with the 2 variables is a good solution.
I’ve not seen it anywhere on the forum, but its not complicated to build.

Why not use the timer device. You can start, stop and reset it with rules, for example when the lamp goes on or off.

Thats also an option for counting the on time. I didn’t test it but i think after a restart of pimatic the timer starts again at 0

Thank you all for the useful hints. The timer device is the solution. The timer value is persistent and has the same value after a restart of pimatic.

Two different solutions are possible with two rules per solution:

1. the simple one, with trust that the timer value is persistent in all situations and the timer will not reset

Rule “Operation counter start” (where “operation-counter” is a timer device)

When 
uvlamp is turned on 
then 
start operation-counter

Rule “operation counter hours”

When 
uvlamp is turned off
then 
stop operation-counter

2. the second one, with storing the total operation hours in an extra variable (e.g. $totalhours)

Rule “Operation counter start”

When 
uvlamp is turned on 
then 
start operation-counter

Rule “operation counter hours”

When 
uvlamp is turned off
then 
stop operation-counter and $totalhours = $totalhours + $timer.time and reset operation-counter after 1s