trying to use a timer to implement a timer function for setting HVAC fan mode to "always on" for a specified period of time, after which i want to revert to "auto".
i've used timers in the past for things like monitoring liveness of water detectors. but now i'm digging in a bit deeper and have run into some confusion regarding the docs and what they say about states and actions, mainly so i can put some putting for manipulating the timer in a control page.
i see that there are separate "start" and "restart" actions. what's the difference? wiki documentation states regarding the start action (confusingly) "You can use the Start Timer action at any time and it will reset the amount of time and start the countdown regardless of state (“active”, “paused”, “inactive”). If the timer is already running, it will have no effect." i think there may be a mistake there - or else this is a very confusing way of describing things.
for restart action, it says "use this action to restart a timer using the default time set for the timer. The countdown will be restarted if the timer is already running".
so my intuition tells me that if timer is in inactive state or paused state, then start does the same thing as restart. but if timer is in active state (i.e. timer already counting down), then start does nothing, but restart still forces it to go back to its default start time and then run from there. is that correct? if so, i guess this is just a documentation bug.
it looks like the phrase "regardless of the state ("active", "paused", "inactive")" was possibly mistakenly added to the description start when it was intended to be added to restart? i think that would explain the discrepancy i'm seeing.