Gradually turn on lights.

[gwp1]

This horse may have been ridden already above and I just missed it but here goes: Is it possible to make Current Alerts click-thru to the offending Ruleset? I had to scramble to do some renaming just so I could figure out what ruleset was having the issue when it got flagged there.

[Fanan]

Another suggestion for upcoming versions is to have some of the most common Expressions easy configurable and available by default. Many of us, including myself, who chooses MSR instead of coding in luup or yaml or even use Node red - do that mainly because of our lack of coding experience. Therefor we would really appriciate all the help we could get, and if I'm correct, it would even be more accessible for a broader audience - just like Vera is more accessible for the common person than HA. An example that I think of is the difference in temperature (or other values) between a sensor indoors and a senor outdoors, would be neat to have as a choice by default. There must be a lot of similair examples . Don't know if this is possible to achive or worthwile, but I thought it was worth to throw it up in the air and see if anyone or anything catches. By the way - have a great weekend!

[toggledbits]

Perhaps your example (which is basically just subtractions of two numbers) is too trivial. But my current thinking in response is that (a) if you want to use expressions, learn how to use expressions, and (b) each expression is the... uh... expression of a lot of local knowledge applied to the problem (what the devices are, why you want to do it, how it will be used, etc.). There isn't enough "common" there to make it worth including in the system itself. It's not a problem requiring a feature solution; documentation would likely be sufficient, including prior Q&A in forum posts.

But to reiterate, this is going to be a hard and fast rule for me: if you want to use a tool, invest the time to learn how to use the tool. You cannot build a reliable and supportable environment for yourself by assembling parts you don't understand. If a problem is important enough for you to want to solve, it's important enough for you to learn how to solve it.

[Fanan]

Point taken. Thanks for your swift reply. I totally agree with you. It's important, not to say crucial, to understand the tools you're using. It was a longshoot, born out of lazyness, combined with a very limited portion of time - and so much to learn in home automation, especially for us with no coding skills. But as they say; every journey starts with a single step...

[LibraSun]

I plan to contribute examples of expressions that have worked for me with hopes that the most basic ones might get incorporated into the official documentation. Yet I agree with Patrick that it could be unwieldy to include those templates in the body of MSR itself.

[MikeReadington]

I was just going to reply to @Fanan about reading examples on the forum can really help point you in the right direction. @LibraSun posted some examples of some things I was struggling with, and that made all the difference. Carefully dissect the examples, refer back to the docs, and the dots will start to connect.

One thing that I think helped me a whole bunch was an Amazon Prime "The Great Courses" course on programing called "How to Program: Computer Science Concepts and Python Exercises." (only $7.99 a month for access) While it is not an MSR programing language course, it helped give me some foundational knowledge that sort of transfers. An example of this would be the principle of "lists" in Python to help you understand the basics of "arrays" in MSR.

Small steps and little victories will keep you going.