Archive for March, 2010

When you can't be there, simulation is the next best thing...

This guide assumes that you have a working system with a security system installed

1. Load Composer and Connect to your project
2. Click on the Agents Tab
3. Highlight the Scheduler Agent.  If you do not have this Agent click on the Add button to add the Agent.
4. Click on New to create a new Variable
5. Enter in a Name for a schedule (In this example we use OccupancySimulator1)
6. Select a time at night and Randomize the time by +/- 30 minutes
7. Select the Repeats Checkbox and Select the Daily Radio Button
8. Ensure that it Repeats Every 1 Day
9. Click on the OK button.
10. You should now have a schedule in your list
11. Select the Programming Tab
12. In the Devices Events side select the Scheduler Event
13. In the Scheduler Events select the OccupancySimulator1 Schedule.
14. In the Device Actions side highlight the Security System
15. In the Security System Actions select Conditionals tab.
16. Select the radio button labelled ‘the Security System is armed to Away’
17. Drag the  icon over the script section of your screen.
18. In the Devices Actions side select the Dimmer device
19. In the Dimmer Actions select the On radio button
20. Drag the   icon over the icon in your scripts section
21. Click no the Programming Control Action in the Device Actions side of the screen.
22. Select the radio button next to Delay.
23. Change the dropdown to minutes and select 30.
24. Drag the  icon and drop it in the scripts section of your screen.
25. In the Device Actions side highlight the Security System
26. In the Security System Actions select Conditionals tab
27. Select the radio button labelled ‘the Security System is armed to Away’
28. Drag the  icon over the script section of your screen.
29. In the Devices Actions side select the Dimmer device
30. In the Dimmer Actions select the Off radio button
31. Drag the   icon over the icon in your scripts section

Congratulations! You have now completed an occupancy simulator.  For additional randomized events repeats steps 2 to 31 but change the schedule name, schedule time and rather then a dimmer have something else turn on and off.

Credit for this write-up goes to Alan Chow of Convergent Technologies from Austrailia. Thanks for contributing, Alan! If you’re visitng from “down under”, be sure to check out their website.

Keypad LED Colors with Control4

This how-to is brought to you by Alan from Control4 Australia

A 3 or 6 button keypad has many great uses in a home automation setup, but can also add confusion for the user if they don’t know the functions for each button.

Keypad Labels
You can order custom labeled keypads from Control4 which is helpful in defining the use for each button. However there are several common scenarios where the labels aren’t helpful.

1. The user can’t read text labels this small
2. They aren’t wearing their glasses or contacts
3. It’s the middle of the night and pitch black

Color LED’s
I wrote about a similar solution with Dimmers where you can use different colors to improve usability. The same principle applies to keypads.

In one keypad all the buttons can look the same with the exception of the labels. If LED colors are changed, the buttons begin to look different. In a short period of time, users can quickly learn to associate colors with certain functions:

* 3 way Dimmer/Switch: choose the same color as the dimmer or switch being controlled (more on this later in the article)
* Play: Green
* Pause: Yellow
* Room Off: red
* Volume: pick a color (eg. Purple) and make Vol Up light color and Vol Down dark color
* Skip Prev/Next: same method as volume.

This greatly improves the usability issues outlined above.

3 Way Dimmer/Switch Toggle
Lets say you have a 3 button keypad controlling 2 dimmers and a ceiling fan. The typical scenario is to simply make the binding in Composer and let the dimmer handle the LED colors and states of the keypad. This works great if the devices are on, but observe what it looks like when they are off:

Which keypad button controls which dimmer or switch? All the LED’s are off, so there’s no color association. You might have a guess as to how it would work, but it might not be a confident guess.
Keypad Managed
The solution to this is to assign your own colors to the keypad. In the properties view for the keypad, check the box “Keypad Managed”. When this is unchecked, the dimmer or switch will set the LED color to whatever the top LED color is on the Dimmer or Switch. If you check this, you can set your own colors

There are 2 colors: Push and Release. Set the push to a Light color and the Release to the same color as the push, only dark. What this will actually do is, when the light is off the keypad will show the release color (your dark color). When the light is on, they keypad with show the push color (your light color). This will allow you to see not only if the light is on, but the buttons will always have color and you’ll be able to quickly identify which button is which, even if the loads are off.

Now if I were to ask you to guess which button controls which, you’d be fairly confident with your guesses.

Tech Note: This only applies to using Keypad Managed Mode
As a side note, you must define your LED colors on your Keypads after it’s associated dimmer/switch. Setting the LED colors on the dimmer/switch after the linked keypad will set the colors to black on the keypad button. So as a good rule of thumb, set dimmer/switch LED colors first and then the keypad colors.

So with a few extra steps and good color choices, you can improve the usability of your keypads.