Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 14—Visual Scene Editor
8 The Home Control Assistant
To create a new scene, press the New Scene button in the ribbon. This dialog appears:
Note that since you are focusing on a specific device you are not asked to choose a device, only to
enter a scene name and choose how the device will participate in the new scene – as a controller or
responder.
Deleting scenes
Regardless of how you start the VSE, if you decide that you have a scene you no longer need it is
simple to have HCA remove it. Press the ribbon
Delete Scene button. The same dialog that
appears when programming a scene is used to remove the programming from all devices in that
scene.
Scenes initiated by HCA and by other devices
Insteon scenes have a number of features that are best understood in order to get full use out of
them.
The key fact about Insteon scenes is that each scene has a controller – the device that initiates it –
and only that controller can initiate the scene. Let’s try an example.
Suppose you have two KeypadLincs and three LampLincs. Also suppose that you create a scene
so that when you press the B button on the KeypadLinc the three LampLincs go to 50% in 2
seconds. Let’s call that Scene One.
Suppose you want the other KeypadLinc B button to do exactly the same thing with the three
LampLincs. But there is no simple way to do that in the Insteon world. There is no command that
this KeypadLinc can send that will cause the LampLincs to respond. This KeypadLinc can’t
“pretend” to be the other KeypadLinc and have the LampLincs respond.
You can create a new scene – let’s call that Scene Two – that also is initiated by button B and
controls the LampLincs in the same way. So even though both scenes have the same effect on their
responders, Scene One is not the same as Scene Two and that is important to remember.
Note for UPB users: If you are familiar with the Universal Powerline Bus
(UPB) linking model this probably all sounds confusing. In the UPB
world once the receivers are programmed, any controller can send the link
number and the responders will respond. This isn’t the way that Insteon
works. In the Insteon world the responders only respond when the link is
sent by the controller they were programmed for.