Manual Override Control with Automatic Return

The deadline is a comparison your automation makes, not a timer this card runs — so an override left behind by a crash or a closed browser stops counting the moment it expires, with nothing to sweep and nothing to remember across a restart.

Who it’s for

A building operator whose guest turned the lobby up, a grower who needs a compartment held while they work in it, a street-lighting crew who need a segment on now and back on programme afterwards — all three ask the same question of the same value: is this coming from the automation or from a person, and when does it go back? The card is deliberately indifferent to what the value is, so the same one sits above a temperature setpoint, an irrigation pump, a damper or a lighting zone.

What it does

A lobby setpoint following its schedule at 21.5 °C is taken to manual for two hours at 16:21. The card writes controlMode: manual and overrideUntil two hours ahead, shows Overridden by A. Zaiko, counts down returns to automatic in 1 h 58 min · 18:21, and at 18:21 reads as automatic again without writing anything to make that true.

• The time remaining in both forms. “in 47 min” and “18:00” answer different questions — one tells you whether to wait, the other tells you what to write on a work order.
• The mode, the deadline and the value they govern, all read back. The card shows what is in force rather than what was last sent.
• An override with no end, and never quietly. A commissioning engineer needs one, so the card offers it and then turns red and says it will not return on its own. That is the failure every operator describes: somebody took control in March and nobody noticed.
• Who took control, printed beside the mode and written on whichever path the card is on — the attribute on one, a third RPC command on the other.
• An override that survives an offline device. On the attribute path the pair is written to the platform rather than to the device: on server scope it never reaches the device at all, and on shared scope it arrives when the device next connects.
• Governs the authority over a value; it does not set the value. Choosing the level, the setpoint or the mode is the job of the control widget beside it.

Requirements

An automation that reads the two keys before it writes. This card records an override; it does not enforce one. Where nothing consults controlMode and overrideUntil, the buttons work and the countdown runs while the value carries on following its schedule. A rule chain, a calculated field or your own service can be that reader — the filter is in How to set up.

How to set up

Data keys

The override card is a control widget and takes no datasource. Choose a target device in the widget configuration; everything below applies to that one entity.

With controlMode never written the card reads as automatic and every duration button stays enabled; the first press sets it. With the value key unbound or never reported, the card names the key it is waiting on rather than showing a bare dash. An overrideUntil in the past reads as automatic without the card writing anything.

Command

Attributes

Values

Teaching your automation to honour the override

Enrich the message with the originator’s server attributes controlMode and overrideUntil, then put this in a script filter ahead of the node that writes to the device:

var mode = metadata.ss_controlMode || 'auto';
var until = Number(metadata.ss_overrideUntil || 0);
var overridden = mode === 'manual' && (until === 0 || until > Date.now());
return !overridden;

True means the schedule may act. False means a person is in charge and the deadline has not passed.

Put that check in front of every write. The override is honoured by whatever reads the two keys, so the comparison has to sit where the write happens — in a rule chain, in a calculated field, or in your own service. Automation that writes on a timer without consulting the mode will keep writing, and the card will then be correctly reporting that a person is in charge while the value moves anyway.

How to customize

• To offer different lengths — edit Durations offered. Each row is a number of minutes and a button label, and they are drawn in the order you list them.
• To require an end time on every override — turn off Offer an override with no end.
• To record who stepped in — Show who took control writes the signed-in user’s name into the Override-by key and prints it beside the mode.
• To reword the card — Caption above the value, Label when mode ‘automatic’ and Label when mode ‘overridden’ are the three phrases an operator reads first. A site that says “on programme” rather than “following the schedule” should say so.
• To show a unit after the value — set Unit shown after the value.
• To say when a reading has gone quiet — set Stale after (minutes, 0 = off). The card stops asserting the value, and taking control stays available, because the mode is still known.
• To label the panel — set Title and Subtitle. Left empty, the subtitle names what a write lands on, whether that is a device or an asset, and the write path.
• To match your dashboard’s palette — set Accent color and Keyboard focus outline color. The outline is drawn around a button reached with the Tab key, never on a mouse click, so a keyboard user can see which control has focus.
• To keep the controls a fixed size — turn off Auto-scale controls to widget size.

Tips

• Keep the pair on server scope when the thing honouring the override is a rule chain. The device then never sees two keys it has no use for, and the override still survives a device that is offline, because the write lands on the platform either way.

• The card and your automation have to agree on the epoch. overrideUntil is milliseconds since 1970 UTC; a rule chain comparing it against a seconds-based clock releases every override immediately, and the card will keep counting down while the schedule writes over the top.

• An override with no end is the one worth auditing. Either report on the overrideUntil = 0 case in your own tooling, or turn off Offer an override with no end on sites where nobody should be able to take control indefinitely.