Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 17—Restart
2 The Home Control Assistant
No uninterruptible power supply
If you are not using a UPS, and you enable power failure recovery, then while the power is on,
HCA writes information to the disk about once a minute. This information includes the current
time, state of all 256 X10 unit codes, and information on the state of any running programs.
When the power fails, the computer powers down and this stops HCA as well. When power
returns, the computer restarts. Windows loads, and if HCA is in the Windows StartUp group,
HCA restarts. If the HCA StartUp properties are set to reload the last design, HCA then performs
three steps:
1. HCA determines that the power has failed by looking on the disk for the file that it has been
writing its state to.
2. Once it finds that file, HCA should know the approximate time the power failed (to the nearest
minute), and the state of all X10 devices.
3. HCA looks at the current schedule and determines what would have happened during the time
power was out, and restores all devices, programs, groups, and schedule entries.
UPB and Insteon Devices don’t require HCA to keep track of their state. All these devices have
their power restored to the state they were in when power was lost. HCA does have to restore
them in accord with the current schedule like it does for X10 devices. This is described later in
this chapter.
Hint: To add HCA to the Windows StartUp group, search for “StartUp” in Windows Help. Read
and follow the directions in the topic, “Starting a program each time Windows starts.”
Using an uninterruptible power supply
If your computer is attached to a UPS, nothing is really changed except that the state file may not
be written until the house power has failed. Once the power returns, power failure recovery is as
described above.
If however, you have a UPS and the power fails but is not out long enough to drain the UPS
batteries, HCA just needs to know the power has failed and when the power has returned. When
power has been restored, HCA restores the state of your home.
None of this power failure recovery happens
unless:
 The restart option is checked
 HCA is added to your Windows startup group
 The Startup option Reopen the last design loaded is checked
Additionally, you can independently set each device, program, and group to participate or not
participate in power failure recovery. You do this in the device, program, and group properties,
with the power failure recovery options.
Controlling restart
There are many different ways to control the actions of Restart. To start with, the whole feature
can be enabled or disabled from the HCA Properties dialog on the Startup tab.