Tasker

Tasker is an add-on application. This means that Tasker is not loaded on the JNIOR before we ship it. This may change in the future.

To load Tasker you will need to get the JNIOR Support Tool and the Tasker update project.

Once you have installed the JNIOR Support Tool, open it and go to the Update tab. Here we will open the Tasker update project that was downloaded. Do not unzip the update project file. You should see the following…

Click Publish and select the JNIOR or JNIORs that you wish the load the Tasker Application on to. The Update project will run until all of the selected JNIORs have been updated.

Once complete, you can go to the Tasker Web Application in your browser. Simply go to http://JNIOR_IP_ADDRESS/tasker.

One of the useful things about Tasker, is that it can include communicating with other devices within its tasks. This is possible by including a networks action, but before those actions can be used devices need to be added to a Tasker application. This post will explain how to create devices to be used in actions for tasks.

To start, we’ll begin by going to the devices tab of the Tasker application.

Here we can select the “Add Device” button which brings up a dialog box to add a device to the current workspace. 

In this dialog, two things need to be defined to create the device. This first value needed is the name of the device. The second value needed is the device type, which can either be an Ethernet or SNMP Device. Depending which Device type you choose changes the what information you can configure for the device after creating it.

Creating an Ethernet Device

If the Ethernet Device type was selected, the configurable option for the created device should look like this:

Two values of the Ethernet Device need configured in order to use it in a Task action, the IP Address and the TCP Port values. These need to be set to the IP Address and TCP Port values on the device, so that when they are used in actions, the JNIOR can properly communicate with the device. Another post has an example of using a TCP Send with an Ethernet Device.

Creating an SNMP Device

If the SNMP Device type was selected, the configurable option for the created device should look like this:

Three values of the SNMP Device need configured in order to use it in a  Task action which are, the IP Address, the UDP Port, and the Community Name. These are needed for the JNIOR to connect to the SNMP Device and you obtain them from the SNMP Device. A different post shows how to use a SNMP Device with an SNMP Trap.

With this, you should have created devices in Tasker that can be implemented in actions.

Schedules add functionality to task created in Tasker because it gives them the ability to place a time for when the tasks should occur. This post will explain the different types of schedules that can be created, and how they can configured.

Creating a Schedule

To start, we’ll go to the Schedule tab of the Tasker application in order to create a schedule.

After going to the Schedule tab, the first thing to do is add a schedule in the Schedule tab. After giving it a name, the new schedule will have 3 parts to it, the name, the rules, and the task to be executed from it.

The Name section already has the name you gave it when it was created, but that section also gives you the options to edit the name, have the schedule enabled or not by checking the checkbox, or delete the schedule.

The Task Name section allow you to select a task from a drop down list or manual enter the name of a task that will execute at when the schedule is set.

Adding Rules to a Schedule

The Schedule Rules section is what allows the schedule to determine the times that which the Task selected in the Task Name section will execute. Clicking the “Add Rule” button opens the rules dialog box.

When adding rules to a schedule, there are 4 types of rules you can add, reboot, sunrise, sunset, and schedule. The first three are similar, where you simply click on the Schedule Type and select sunrise, sunset, or reboot from the drop down list. This will make it so that the task you set with that schedule will run at either sunrise, sunset, or on reboot, depending on which one you picked and no other options need to be selected. 

Picking the Schedule option in the Schedule Type, lets you set the custom options for creating a schedule. The first option after the Schedule Type is the Start On option. This lets you select what day the schedule will begin to activate. Once the date reaches the day you selected it will run that schedule from then on. 

After that is the Start Time option. This allows you to select from the hours and minutes in a 24 hour format when the scheduled task will begin. 

Next is the Repeat Every option, which lets you how often in a time interval you want the task to reoccur. It adds a End Time option once a value has been added to the Repeat Every option. It can be set similar to the Start Time option that will decide when the Task will stop repeating by. 

After that is the Date Selection Type option, which lets you choose between letting the task execute None (Which is one time), Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Depending on what option you choose, this changes the Recur Every option. Picking the None option  will make the task only run on the Start On date you picked. The Daily option will let you choose how many days between the task should run. The Weekly option will let you choose what days of the week the task should run. The Monthly option will let you choose what days of  month the task should run.

With this, you should be able to assign schedules for any task you have created.

The Tasker Application has a lot of different functionality built into its actions, but it also can handle logic too. One of those actions that you can create in Tasker is the If block action. This post will create two If blocks in Tasker, one being the If block and the other being the If/else block.

Create an If Block

To start, create a new workspace by going to the File Drop-Down and selecting new. After that, go into the Task tab of Tasker and select the “Add Task” button. Once you name your Task, you’ll click on it and select the “Add Action” button. This will bring up the Action Dialog box. Here we need to select the If block action in the Control Structures section of the Action Dialog box. Once we have our If block in the task, we’ll want to add one more action inside of the If block by selecting the “Add Action” button inside of the If block. Here we’ll also select the Pulse Output Relay action.

Setting the If Block Actions

Now that our actions have been added to the Task, we can now configure them to do what we want. For this example, we are going to configure the if statement to activate when Input 1 goes high. To check if the input is high, for the If block value field we’ll enter din[1].state == 1.

With this, the If block will Pulse Output Relay 1 for 1 second if Input 1 is high.

Create an If/Else Block

In the workspace, go into the Task tab of Tasker and select the “Add Task” button. Once you name your Task, you’ll click on it and select the “Add Action” button. This will bring up the Action Dialog box. Here we need to select the If/else block action in the Control Structures section of the Action Dialog box. Once we have our If block in the task, we’ll want to add two more actions inside of the If/else block by selecting the “Add Action” button inside of the If/else block. Here we’ll select the Pulse Output Relay action inside the conditional part of the If/else block , and the Pulse Output Relay action inside for the “else” part of the If/else block.

Setting the If/Else Block Actions

With the actions being added to the Task, we can now configure them to do what we want. For this example, we are going to configure the If block to Pulse Output Relay 1 when Input 1 goes high, and Pulse Output Relay 2 when Input 1 isn’t high. For the If/else block value field, to check if the input is high we’ll enter din[1].state == 1. For the first Pulse Output Relay, we’ll set the channel to 1, and for the other pulse relay we’ll set the channel to 2.

With this, the If/else block should Pulse Output Relay 1 for 1 second when Input 1 is high, and Pulse Output Relay 2 for 1 second when Input 1 is not high.

The Tasker application has been made to handle lots of different types of functionality. This post will go into looking at the Set Variable action and then a logic example using the set variable to send fire alarm macros to different devices. Doing this example requires the environmental or temperature sensor to be completed.

The Set Variable Action

The Set Variable Action allows you to create a variable in the first value field of the action, and then assign it a value in the second value field. This is useful when using other control structure actions, such as loops or if blocks.

Fire Alarm Example

In this Example, before we create the Fire Alarm Task, we need to create the devices that will receive the macro we send for the fire alarm, like shown above. You’ll also need to the have the Cinema application updated to your JNIOR. To start, go to the device tab and click the “Add Device” button. Add as many Devices as you have JNIORs you plan to send a Fire Alarm macro to. Each device you’ll enter its IP address, and TCP Port number from the Cinema Server Client Registry Key. The Registry Key is under AppData/Cinema/CinemaServerClient/TcpPort in the registry tab of the JNIOR’s webpage.

After creating the devices to send macros to, you’ll start creating the task. It starts with the Set Variable actions. These actions are used to define the values of two temperatures received from a temperature sensor or environmental sensor, and the variable used to know when to end the Task. We define the two Temp variables to values our temperature or environmental sensors are picking up, and the other variable will be set to true as our conditional until the macros. Once these values are defined, a while loop is added to the task. This will check if the conditional of the variable we created is true, which is how we set it so that it will always be looping. After that, we add an if block and set the conditional of it.  This is to determine if the movie theater’s screen room is a lot more hotter then the rest of the movie theater, indicating a possible fire. When the temperature difference is above 20 degrees (indicating a possible fire), using as many TCP send actions for devices you have, it sends to those JNIORs to run their FireAlarm macros. It also sets the conditional for the while loop to false, so the task no longer loops, and ends.

With this, you should have a task that constantly monitors the temperatures of two temperature/environmental sensors, and when the difference between them is greater then 20, sends out the fire alarm macros and ends the task.

Signals and Triggers are very useful tools in the Tasker application. Signals are I/O values on either the JNIOR or a compatible expansion module with the JNIOR. Triggers are reactions to when a signal occurs. This post will explain all the parts of the Signal and Trigger tabs in detail.

The Signal Tab

To start, the Signal tab is needed in order to use the Triggers tab, so we’ll start with Signals. Signals are I/O values on either the JNIOR or a compatible expansion module with the JNIOR. Each Signal values has what device the Signal is coming from, the channel number of the value, and then the type of value its getting. These can be used either in a Trigger or to set/evaluate the value of a variable defined in a task.

The Trigger Tab

The Trigger is a reaction to a Signal value. Triggers are made up of first, a Trigger value that watches a Signal to react to, along with what the Signal value needs to be to activate the Trigger. Second, is the Reset value that monitors a Signal like the Trigger value does. The Reset value when activated resets the Trigger so it can activate again. A Trigger won’t activate after it has activated once already, unless the reset value activates. Lastly, a task name is selected as the task to run when the Trigger value is met and the Trigger activates.

These steps show show you how to properly create a Signal and Trigger.

Example

The example below will show you how to make a Trigger activate when Relay output 1 on the JNIOR goes High.

We’ll create two Signals with the first ones values being: Device is the Relay Output states of a JNIOR, the channel 1, and the type being the state. The second ones values would be: Device is the Relay Output states of a JNIOR, the channel 2, and the type being the state.

Afterwards you would begin configuring a Trigger. The Trigger values would be the Example Signal we created, and its trigger value will be high. For the Reset values, we’ll select the Example Signal Reset we created as the Reset value, and its reset value will be high as well. Lastly, we’ll pick whichever task we want to run during the Trigger activation as the Task value. In this example my task I created is Example Task.

When working in Tasker, at some point you might need to move a workspace from one PC to another. You also might want to have the workspaces saved on your PC rather than in the JNIOR. The upload and download functionality in Tasker allows you to save workspaces as JSON files, as well as upload them onto the Tasker application as a workspace.

To start, its good to know what a workspace is. It is configuration settings for the Tasker application. While the current configuration is the one you currently view when accessing the Tasker Web Page, other tasker configurations could have been created and sit in the background. Upload and Download are ways to access these different configurations that have been created and saved.

To download a workspace from Tasker, you’ll want to click on the file tab and in the drop-down select the download option.

When selecting the download option, it immediately begins the download of a JSON file. This is the file that can be uploaded as the chosen JSON file for the current workspace.

To upload a workspace from Tasker, you’ll want to click on the file tab and in the drop-down select the upload option.

Clicking the upload option  will prompt you if you wish to continue. This is because uploading a workspace gets rid of the one you are currently making. Make sure that if you want to keep your current workspace configuration, that you save it before you continue with the upload. Uploading will place the JSON file into the workspace folder inside the Tasker directory on the JNIOR.

The Tasker application has a lot of different functionality built into its actions, but it also can handle logic. One of those logic actions that you can create in Tasker is the loop action. This post will create two loops in Tasker, one being the for loop and the other being the while loop.

Creating a For Loop

To start, create a new workspace, by going to the File Drop-Down and selecting new. After that, go into the Task tab of Tasker and select the “Add Task” button. Once you name your Task, you’ll click on it and select the “Add Action” button. This will bring up the Action Dialog box. Here we need to select the for loop action in the Control Structures section of the Action Dialog box. Once we have our loop in the task, we’ll want to add two more actions inside of the loop by selecting the “Add Action” button inside of the loop. Here we’ll also select the Pulse Relay action and the Sleep action.

Setting the For Loop Action Values

Now that we have our Task’s actions added, we can configure their values to what we want, which is to have our loop use a variable to pulse relays 1 – 3 for 2 seconds, with a 1 second delay between them. To do this, we’ll start by setting the variable in the first field value of the loop action, which in this example we will make $a. The other loop fields are to set how many times the loop will repeat, and since we want to pulse 3 relays we’ll set the second loop field to 1 and the third to 3.

Next for the Pulse Relays action, the first field will be replaced with the variable we created in the first field of the loop action, $a. After that we’ll want the second field set to 1, since we want it to pulse for 1 seconds. Lastly, we’ll set the sleep action to 2 seconds so that no relay is pulsing at the same time as another, and has 1 second delay between each other.

With this, your loop should be configured properly. Now it will loop through output relays 1 – 3 on your JNIOR, pulsing each relay for 1 second with a 1 second delay between each relay pulsing.

Creating a While Loop

For creating a while loop, in your workspace go into the Task tab of Tasker and select the “Add Task” button. Once you name your Task, you’ll click on it and select the “Add Action” button. This will bring up the Action Dialog box. Here we need to select the while loop action in the Control Structures section of the Action Dialog box. Once we have our loop in the task, we’ll want to add two more actions inside of the loop by selecting the “Add Action” button inside of the loop. Here we’ll also select the Pulse Relay action and the Sleep action.

Setting the While Loop Action Values

Now that we have our Task’s actions added, we can configure their values to what we want, which is to have our loop use a variable to check the state of input 1, and if its high (equal to 1) to pulse output 1 for 1 second with a one second delay between it every time it pulses. To do this, we’ll start by setting the variable in the field value of the loop action to din[1].state == 1 to check if input 1’s state is high. Then we’ll set the pulse output of whichever relay we wish to pulse for 1 second, with a second sleep so it will pulse for 1 second, and then wait 1 second.

Tasker is able to perform many different things, one of which is the ability to log information. Tasker contains a Logger tab that can create Logger profiles to record data. These Loggers tell what needs logged and which file it should be stored in when used in a task. This post will show how to record temperature values from an environmental sensor using Tasker.

In order to setup Tasker to record temperatures from a environmental sensor, there are a few step we need to take:

1. First we need to create Signals in the Signal Tab. These will be used in the Logger tab to record their values.
2. Next we create a Logger in the Logger tab. Here we use the Signals to document their values in log files.
3. After creating the Logger, we now go to the Task tab and create a task that includes the Logger that was just created.
4. Finally, once the task is created, in the Schedule tab we create a Schedule that runs the task for however often we wish to record the environmental sensor values.

Creating Signals

Signals are Input/Output values from the JNIOR or from expansion modules compatible with the JNIOR. In this example we are using a environmental sensor expansion module to record these values. First we’ll create a new workspace using the File Drop-Down. Then in the Signals tab, After clicking the “Add Signal” button, we’ll create a new signal called Temp_1. After the Signal is created, it has three value fields to fill out. The first one is the Signal drop down value, where you will pick where we are getting the Input/Output values from. As stated previously, we are grabbing these values from a environmental sensor, so we’ll select it from the drop down options. Next is the channel for the environmental sensor. Each channel represents a different environmental sensor. Since we are only using one sensor, we’ll select channel 1. Lastly is the variable type, and while the values you can get are either Celsius, Fahrenheit, or humidity, we are going to be logging the info in Fahrenheit, so that’s what we’ll chose.

Creating a Logger

Now that the Signal is created, we can create a Logger to record those values to a file. We’ll go to the Logger tab and select “Add Logger”. After naming the Logger, three values fields need filled in. The first is the Log File Path, which is the where in the folder directory of the JNIOR the files  recording the Signal information will be saved. In our example, we used the file path /flash/tasker/logging/temps-{{date(YYMMDD)}}.csv. The ending of the filepath is to specify the date as the name of the .csv file being saved. After this is the Columns field which create columns of the recorded information in the log file. This example will just have {{Temp_1}} which will specify the Signal we previously created as the information being logged. Lastly, is the file retention count. All this does is decide how many files of information Logger will create before overwriting previous files, so if the number is set to 10, once Logger has created 10 files of information, next file it create will overwrite the previous 1st Logger file. This example uses 30.

Creating a Task

With the Logger being created, we now need a task that uses our Logger so it will activate and record the data we want. In the Task tab, we’ll select the button “Add Task”. Once the Task is named, click on its name and select “Add Action”. The Action Dialog box will appear which has all the actions a task can perform. Here we’ll select the Log Profile action, which we can use to call the Logger we created in the Task. Once the action is added, the only value to enter is the name of the Logger we just created. This will now make the Task activate the Logger each time its run.

Creating a Schedule

Lastly, having a task activate a Logger is good, but it will only record when you activate it. Adding the task to a schedule will allow us to record these values on a time interval. Going to the Schedule tab, you’ll click on the “Add Schedule” button. After naming the Schedule, there will be two options to fill out. The first one appears by selecting the “Add Rule” button, which will bring up the Rule Dialog box where you can configure when the schedule is timed. For this example we will set the Schedule type to schedule so we have more options rules to pick from. The start on date is  the date for whenever you want the schedule to begin activating the task you set with it. Next is the Start Time, Repeat Every, and End Time options (End Time appears after you edit Repeat Every). We set both the Start and End Time to Midnight so that the interval is always running. Repeat Every is set to 2.5 minutes so that with the Start and End time set, the task will run every 2.5 minutes for an entire day. For the Date Selection type, we used daily in this example so we can set the Recur Every option to 1. This will make the task run every day. Lastly, after completing the Rules for the schedule, we add a task that we want the schedule to activate based off the rules we set for it, which will be the task we created in the Tasks tab.

Once the Schedule is completed, the Logger will now record the Signal values of the environmental sensor as values in a .csv file from a task that is scheduled to run every 2.5 minutes, every day.

Sometimes you may want something to occur at a specific time of day or sometimes you may want something to occur with certain events during the day.  The “events” in this case are the Sunrise and Sunset events.  These events occur at different times during the day based on the time of year and your geographic location.  Tasker grabs the location from the JNIOR registry, and uses it to calculate the time of sunrise and sunset for that day.

We had written a custom application called the SunEquation Application to accomplish the following before implementing the logic in Tasker.  You may ask, “What is the SunEquation application and can Tasker handle the same logic?”  The answer is that Tasker is a heavyweight application that uses more processing power than a simple custom application that was designed to do one thing.  The SunEquation application was written for someone that was already running two other applications and the addition of Tasker might slow those other applications down.  Specifically the DMX application is sensitive to performance and that application is one of the two applications that were in use.

Below is an example to send commands to the Cinema Server Client  in Cinema to run macros. This requires having the support tool downloaded along with the applications Tasker and Cinema updated on to your JNIOR.  There are several steps that will need to be configured to get this to work.

1. Create Macros in the Support Tool that you wish to have run at Sunrise and Sunset.
2. Create a Task that will perform the action of requesting that the macros get run in Cinema. The action in these Tasks will depend on a Device object that will need to be created as well.
3. Create Schedules that will execute the Tasks based on Sunrise and Sunset.

Create the Macros

To start, we need to create the macros in the support tool that will be run in Cinema as requested by Tasker. Opening the Support tool, under the macro tab, we can create a macro for sunrise and sunset, and we’ll rename them to that as well, adding whatever actions the macros should perform. This then needs to be published to the JNIOR.

Create a Device

After creating the macros, we need to create a device in Tasker. We first need to create a new workspace using the File Drop-Down before creating a device. After that we’ll go to the device tab in Tasker, and click on the “Add Device” button. This will add a device in Tasker. Now all you need to do is set the IP Address of the JNIOR and the Tcp port number to the same value as the Cinema Server Client port number registry key under AppData/Cinema/CinemaServerClient.

Create Tasks

The next thing needed to have the macro request sent to the Cinema application is to create TCP send tasks. To create a task you go to the Task tab in Tasker, and select “Add Task”. Once you’ve named the task, you’ll click on the task and select “Add Action”. This will make the action dialog box appear, which contains all the actions you can make your task perform. There you’ll select the TCP Send action. You will then add the device that was just created, and the message should be “run” followed by the name of the macro that was created in the support tool. The macro names also have an \r\n on the end of them to signal where the end of the command is when its being sent. Since we created two macros in the support tool for sunrise and sunset, we’ll create two tasks for them, one for sunrise, and one for sunset. Both of these tasks will be using the same device.

Create a Schedule

To setup macros to run at sunrise and sunset, you’ll now want to go to the schedule tab of the Tasker application. Once you add a schedule, name it, and select the task to run in that schedule, you’ll want to click on “Add Rule”button . As in the example below, since we previously created two tasks for sunrise and sunset, we’ll want two schedules for those tasks, one for sunrise and one for sunset.

Once you’ve clicked “Add Rule”, the Rule Dialog box will open. Here we’ll want to select the Schedule Type option, which will present 4 options. Two of those options will be Sunrise and Sunset.

After selecting the sunrise option for the sunrise task, and the sunset option for the sunset task, those tasks will now run at those times.

Once this is all done, whenever it is sunrise/sunset for the day, Tasker will send commands to Cinema that will execute the macros created in the support tool.