WCSCHEDULER - Schedule Watts Clever Switches

This is a Raspberry Pi program to switch one or more Watts Clever RF switches to turn mains powered devices on or off at specified times and days of week. It uses my Python module wcccontrol which controls Watts Clever switches via an RF transmitter. It also runs a small internal webserver to receive webhooks commands from the internet, e.g. from IFTTT using Google Assistant (V2 since Sep 2022), to remotely switch the devices.

The latest version of this document and code is available at https://github.com/bulletmark/wcscheduler.

Installation

Requires Python 3.6 or later. Does not work with Python 2.

git clone https://github.com/bulletmark/wcscheduler.git
cd wcscheduler
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt

The above will install wccontrol in your local .venv/ dir but you then need to follow the instructions to make the GPIO accessible and then to program the switches.

Be sure to set up the gpio group and udev rules etc as described and also program the switch groups and addresses. Run .venv/bin/wccontrol from within your wcscheduler dir to program the switches.

Configuration

Copy the sample wcscheduler.conf configuration file to ~/.config/wcscheduler.conf and then edit the sample settings in that target file to your requirements. You can add multiple on/off times for multiple devices as described by the comments in that file.

cp wcscheduler.conf ~/.config/
vim ~/.config/wcscheduler.conf

Setting times based on Sunrise and/or Sunset

You can set absolute on and off times, or you can set times based on sunrise and sunset events, with a +/- delay, for a location. A location is specified as a latitude and longitude pair of coordinates. See the instructions in the sample configuration file. Sunrise and Sunset times are fetched from the free Sunrise Sunset API.

systemd Configuration for Auto Start etc

Copy the included wcscheduler.service to /etc/systemd/systemd/ and edit the #TEMPLATE# values within that target file:

sudo cp wcscheduler.service /etc/systemd/systemd/
sudoedit /etc/systemd/systemd/wcscheduler.service

Then:

sudo systemctl enable wcscheduler
sudo systemctl start wcscheduler

If you change the configuration then restart with:

sudo systemctl restart wcscheduler

To see status and logs:

systemctl status wcscheduler
journalctl -u wcscheduler

IFTTT Webhook Configuration

You can set up an IFTTT webhook applet e.g. which can be trigged by Google Assistant (V2) to switch your devices remotely by voice command from your phone or from a Google home device. Configure a IFTTT webhook POST JSON command with webhook and action keys in the body as a minimum. You can also include the created key which can be used to time contrain the message (see the comments about webdelay in wcscheduler.conf). The webhook key must match the webhook name you configure in the corresponding outputs section of your ~/.config/wcscheduler.conf. E.g.:

{
  "webhook": "webhook_name"
  "action": "{{SceneName}}",
  "created": "{{ActivatedAt}}",
}

As required for Google Assistant V2 integration with IFTTT, if you want to switch a light on and off then you will need 2 web hooks, one for Google Assistant scene "Activate Lights On" and another for scene "Activate Lights Off". Both will be configured with the same JSON post data and the SceneName will convey the desired action by containing one of the words on, enable, set, true, or yes to activate the function (any case), and not one of those words to de-activate the function.

Be sure to specify webport in ~/.config/wcscheduler.conf for the port for the web server to listen on and receive JSON POST messages. If webport is not set, or there are no webhook values set for any outputs, then the internal web server will not be started. A typical home user will need to forward the port from their internet router to the Raspberry Pi running this application.

Command Line Usage

Type wcscheduler -h to view the following usage summary:

usage: wcscheduler [-h] [-c CONFIG] [-C]

Program to schedule control of Watts Clever switches.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONFIG, --config CONFIG
                        alternative configuration file
  -C, --no-cache        do not use sunset/rise API cache

License

Copyright (C) 2019 Mark Blakeney. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for more details.