Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 10—Programs and the Visual Programmer
30 The Home Control Assistant
Get Status
The Get Status element initiates a poll of one or more devices that respond to status requests.
You can either select the devices you want to poll or you can just say to get status from every
device that responds to status requests.
One important point about this element is that these status requests are not performed when the Get
Status element is executed. The status requests are queued for later transmission. There is no way
to predict when they will be sent.
Make flag No/Make flag Yes/Not flag
HCA provides flags as a very simple way for programs to keep track of things. Unlike other
objects in HCA, flags are not created by using a wizard. Flags are created when you use first use
them. Flags are very important for some aspects of programs, and flags have a few simple rules:
 You can have any number of flags you want in any program.
 Flags can take on many values but these elements only work with Yes and No values.
 Each flag has its own name.
Flags become very important when using the
Test element.
Hint: One of the things the Test element can do is to check the value of a flag, and do different
things based upon the outcome of that test.
There are three elements that work with flags:
Make flag No—Makes the flag contain a No value
Make flag Yes—Makes the flag contain a Yes value
Not flag—This reverses the value of the flag. If the flag contains a Yes before the Not element is
executed, it contains a No after. If the flag contains a No before the
Not element is executed, the
Not changes it to a Yes.
These three elements have similar properties.