Automating changing of the exercise time

[NorthernMI]

Checklist

• I made sure that there are no existing issues or discussions - open issues,closed issues,open discussion, closed discussion - which may answer my question or that I could contribute my information to.
• I have read the Known Issues Wiki Page and my question / issue is not listed.
• I have provided the version of the software and the operating system in my post.
• If I have an issue with genmon not communicating with the controller, I have read and followed the serial troubleshooting guide.
• I have included the generator make and model in my submission.

Version

Genmon V1.19.08
Generac 11kw air-cooled
Pi zero 2W running Debian 1:6.12.47-1+rpt1~bookworm (2025-09-16)

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I have not submitted logs

What is/are your question(s)?

I did look at discussion #1217, but it didn't answer all my questions. My goal is to update the controller monthly exercise date to a
specific day of the month (e.g. 1st Saturday). Setting the controller's exercise time looks pretty straight forward. I am using the enhanced exercise add-on.

Questions:

1 - Is there a (easy) way to retrieve the existing exercise time from the controller?
2 - For enhanced exercise, is updating genexercise.conf then restarting genmon the best process? I notice genmon restarts when updating enhanced exercise via the web interface.

Additional information

No response

[jgyates]

Hi @NorthernMI

The easy way to get the built in exercise cycle is to look on the Maintenance page of the web interface. You can view it and set it from that page.

For enahnced exercise add on, the recommended method is to make changes on the Add on page in the web interface.

Yes, anytime you modify and save a setting genmon will restart as it need to reload the configuration. If you make the change to the config file manually, genmon will not read the change until you manually restart the software.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[NorthernMI]

This is great news. I was just starting the code to update enhanced exercise parameters. The code to set the generator's cycle is working.

I have one request. Can you add exercise_nth_day_of_month into the output from the get_add_on_settings call? I want to output the enhanced exercise settings when the generator cycle is updated.

[jgyates]

Hi @NorthernMI

Can you provide some context. I can add this however there is a trade off for introducing complexity in the user experience (more options that can sometimes be interpreted incorrectly). Knowing how this would be used may help make this choice more clear to me.

[NorthernMI]

An http get request (http:/xxxx:8000/cmd/get_add_on_settings) retrieves all the parameters for genmon's addons. The exercise_nth_day_of_month parameter is not in the genexercise section of the json output. I've attached the json output plus a snippet that dumps it.

Let me know if that clears up what I'm asking for.
Thanks

genexercise.json.txt
genmon_addon.py.txt

[jgyates]

I am asking a more application specific question. What are you trying to accomplish? Is this for another project or you own home automation, etc? If I add this to the get_add_on_settings it will populate the web interface with this option, which can introduce questions. Knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish may help me understand the benefit of adding this.

[NorthernMI]

After I replied I was wondering if those parameters were coming from the web interface. It's not worth your effort to update the web interface. I've got a python script that will update the generator's exercise cycle (via genmon setexercise) to the nth day of the week for the next monthly cycle The plan was to verify the enhanced exercise parameters match the new timing for the internal exercise cycle. I run a monthly 30 minute enhanced exercise cycle over the internal cycle. It's not critical to verify the enhanced exercise parms. I just have to do it manually, or read the genexercise.conf file directly.

[NorthernMI]

Hi @jgyates ,

I'm closing this as resolved. The parameter exercise_nth_day_of_month in genexercise.conf works quite nicely. I've got a python script that handles setting the generator controller day for the next month, once the current month's cycle has passed.