Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 10—Programs and the Visual Programmer
The Home Control Assistant 41
Device ON / Device OFF / Device DIM
This type of test checks the state of a device, group, or program in your design to see if it’s on, off,
or dim. One very important point to note is that this test is based upon what state HCA thinks the
device is in. For example, if HCA sends an On command to a lamp it records it as On. If you
subsequently use a wall switch to turn the light off HCA may not be informed that the light is off.
Hint: The one exception to this is if the device supports status requests. Not all devices support
this. If you happen to have one, make sure you enable this option in the properties
(advanced tab) for this device. All UPB devices, and some other devices, like Magic
Module relays, also support reading their status.
When testing for dim you can test to see if the illumination level is less than, greater than, or in a
range of levels. If the device supports stored scenes, you can test to see if the device is currently
set to some specified scene illumination.
Schedule is Current
This type of test checks to see if a schedule is the current schedule.
Flag value is “Yes”/Flag value is “No”
This type of test checks the current value of a flag. Since flags can contain Yes and No values, you
can test for either of those conditions.
1. From the flags list, select the flag you are testing, or type in the name of a new flag.
This element only tests flags for simple yes and no values. To test for other values use the
Compute Test element. If you do use the Test element and the flag doesn't contain a simple Yes or
No value, the value is coerced into a Yes or No value. See the chapter on expressions for more
details on this.
Time Between
The Time Between test allows your program to perform different actions depending upon the time
of day when the
Test element is executed. This condition is a little more complex, and allows you
to specify several different settings.