From time to time, I’ve had the occasion to turn something on/off several times during a 24 hour day. In the past (using a SmartThings hub), I’ve used it to circulate the air at our Florida condo during the time we are away–humidity is your enemy when the air is calm and moist: mold grows easily down there! To make sure the humidity remains below 60% while away–a good target, per our homewatch folks–this is part of the plan, along with humidity monitoring and a Nest thermostat for remote control of the HVAC.
The problem is stratification of the stagnant air: heat rises, moisture falls.
A similar thing was happening recently at our northern home. I found myself manually turning on the ceiling fan in our open-concept living/dining/kitchen area when I saw the temperature in the adjacent office and the kitchen area were way different from each other. Those rooms are heated by one of our mini-splits, mounted high on the wall above the living room. Up there, the mini-split’s thermostat is happily chugging along at 62 degrees while we are away. But down at floor level, it was considerably cooler–sometimes as much as ten degrees. (It is a net-zero home with thick walls and extensive insulation, so there isn’t much natural air movement, such as what one has with a forced-air heating system.)
But there’s a simple, much easier way with our Z-Box Hub installed last summer to replace the former SmartThings hub at that home. Three quick Scenes later, the ceiling fan in the living room comes on four times per day for an hour each time. Since implementing this, the observed temperature differential has been no more than a degree or so on a cold winter day.
My convention for a virtual device–a simple switch, in this case–is to name the device or variable starting with a ‘v.’ So, first create an enumerated variable named ‘vRunFans’ and give it the values ‘True’ and ‘False.’ Then, we turn the variable on or off on a schedule…
Scene: Trigger vRunFans ON/OFF
In this scene, we turn the virtual “device” (or variable) on four times per day, after which it waits one hour and turns it OFF again.
Scene: FansON
In this scene, we turn a fan or fans ON when the virtual device (variable) vRunFans turns ON.
Scene: FansOFF
In this scene, we do the opposite function and turn a fan or fans OFF when the virtual device (variable) vRunFans turns OFF.
Note that the two ON/OFF Scenes are written to only run when the home Profile is in ‘Away’ mode. If we’re home, it is less likely the air is stagnant! 
This is a simple example of using a variable, as well as the ability of a Scene to introduce a delay in the action portion. A similar Scene could be used to control other devices you wish to run on a periodic basis. Or use a scene with a delay to turn off a light after, say, motion were detected. This is limited only by your imagination…
Of course, this could be done in a single Lua Scene if that’s your inclination. But this was a quickie and serves the Use Case quite handily…
Tip: make these three Scenes ‘hidden,’ as they run automatically on their own and you don’t need them cluttering up the mobile app! 
What Use Cases have you found that are easily implemented in the Z-Box Hub?
