I use many advanced flows in my setup that allow for things to happen based on time. For example: I have a button on my dishwasher that I press, and it announces that the dishwasher has started on my Echos and tells Alexa to set a reminder to empty the dishwasher after 2 hours, then there is a delay and another announcement after 2 hours that the dishwasher has complete (I have this basic setup for multiple appliances).
What I would like to see is a page within Homey that allows me to see all the flows that are currently running and to be able to stop those from continuing if needed. So, for example, I push the button to run the flow and this dishwasher load is much faster because I am not drying what’s in there, I would like to be able to open the page and see that a dishwasher flow is running and then be able to remove it from the queue. I would also like to be able to stop the flow based on a particular button press so like the buttons I use now are the Ikea dimmers, so I have 4 actions on them (Up Press, Up Long Press, Down Press, Down Long Press) so if I were able to set it right I would want an Up Press to trigger a flow, an up long press to stop the flow from continuing and the down press to remove the reminder from my Alexa (the reminder removal is already set up with my flow setup now it just might need to be re worked a bit).
The main ask here would be to have a dashboard that shows running flows and allows them to be stopped and to tap into that stop flow process programmatically.
You could achieve that using a chronograph timer for the flow to wake every, say, minute. The flow could set a variable to show state; say. Started, Stopped, and Stopping. You wouldn’t need two types of button press. When pressed the button would start the flow if stopped which would set the variable to Started. If status is Started it would set the status to Stopping. The next time the flow wakes up if it sees status Stopping it would stop and set status to Stopped. Announcements would let you know what’s happening.
A flow, independent if it’s a normal or an advanced flow, only takes a few milliseconds from start to finish. The only exception is if you use the build-in delay cards, respectively the delay function in normal flows.
But personally I don’t recommend using the build-in delay cards for longer delays, because the delay will be interrupted if Homey is restarted (for what reason ever). What means, that the flow will be also interrupted.
This is not the case by using the Chronograph app (don’t know how other timer apps behave). The timer continues after a Homey restart. However, the timer/running time, is not part of the flow, it runs inside the Chronograph app. This is the reason why it makes also no sense to mark a flow as “running” when using the Chronograph app. A flow with Chronograph flow cards needs also only a few milliseconds from start to finish.
From my point of view, it only makes sense to mark a flow as “running” when using build-in delay cards.
Just my 2 cents.
Edit
What would make sense would be a list of when a flow was last started. Also with information about the trigger and, if available, the corresponding value, e.g. 50 lux, 23 °C, person X (for the Home/Away function, etc.).
