Scheduling a Kiln Run
=====================

Our lives are busy. Sometimes you'll want your kiln to start at a scheduled time. This is really easy to do with the **at** command. Scheduled events persist if the raspberry pi reboots.

## Install the scheduler

This installs and starts the **at** scheduler.

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install at

### Verify Time Settings

Verify the date and time and time zone are right on your system:

    date

If yours looks right, proceed to **Examples**. If not, you need to execute commands to set it. On a raspberry-pi, this is easiest by running...

    sudo raspi-config

Localisation Options -> Timezone -> Pick one -> Ok


## Examples

Start a biscuit firing at 5am Friday morning:

    at 5:00am friday <<END
    curl -d '{"cmd":"run", "profile":"cone-05-long-bisque"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://0.0.0.0:8081/api
    END

Start a glaze firing in 15 minutes and start a kiln watcher. This is really useful because the kiln watcher should page you in slack if something is wrong with the firing:

    at now +15 minutes <<END
    curl -d '{"cmd":"run", "profile":"cone-6-long-glaze"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://0.0.0.0:8081/api
    source ~/kiln-controller/venv/bin/activate; ~/kiln-controller/watcher.jbruce.py
    END

Start a biscuit fire at 1a tomorrow, but skip the first two hours [120 minutes] of candling because I know my wares are dry. One interesting thing to note about this example is that I am not starting a kiln watcher here. If I did, the watcher would page me at the start of the run because skipping the first two hours means that we are asking the kiln to immediately be at 200F... which it cannot immediately do. It would page me every 60s until it reaches temp. This is easily addressed by creating a new profile that does not include candling, but starts at room temp and heats at a rate which the kiln is capable. Another possibility would be to schedule the start of the watcher say ten or fifteen minutes after the biscuit firing starts which gives the kiln time to heat up. options.

    at 1am tomorrow <<END
    curl -d '{"cmd":"run", "profile":"cone-05-long-bisque","startat":120}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://0.0.0.0:8081/api
    END

Stop any running firing at 3pm tomorrow:

    at 3pm tomorrow <<END
    curl -d '{"cmd":"stop"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://0.0.0.0:8081/api
    END

Start a 15 hour long glaze firing in 5 minutes and schedule for graphs from [kiln-stats](https://github.com/jbruce12000/kiln-stats) to be created on the raspberry-pi afterward and make the graphs available via a web server running on port 8000. You can do all kinds of interesting things with this. You could create a single job for the webserver and a job per hour to update the graphs. This way you can see detailed graphs of PID params and how the system is responding to them.

    at now + 5 minutes <<END
    curl -d '{"cmd":"run", "profile":"cone-6-long-glaze"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://0.0.0.0:8081/api
    END 

    at now + 16 hours <<END
    source ~/kiln-stats/venv/bin/activate; cd ~/kiln-stats/scripts/; cat /var/log/daemon.log |~/kiln-stats/scripts/log-splitter.pl |grep ^1>~/kiln-stats/input/daemon.log; ~/kiln-stats/scripts/go; cd ~/kiln-stats/output; python3 -m http.server
    END

List scheduled jobs...

    atq

Remove scheduled jobs...
 
    atrm jobid

where jobid is an integer that came from the atq output