Owner's Manual (Complete)
Chapter 27—Getting Help
2 The Home Control Assistant
To receive the fastest response to your technical questions, please include the responses to ALL of
the following items in your e-mail.:
What is the exact sequence of events that created the problem? Make sure that you can
reproduce the problem by following the same series of steps.
What is the version number of HCA? To get the version number from the Help menu, choose
About HCA.
What is the type of computer you are using and the version of Windows in use? The operating
system version number can be found using the control panel
System applet.
Provide the exact wording of any error messages.
Software is very complex and a program like HCA is a very complex program. While the
programmers try extra hard to get it right, sometime problems happen. If you find a problem
please report it in a way that helps us find it and fix it.
Reporting a bug is an art that everyone should learn regardless of what software you are working
with. It is vital that you provide all the information you can. The absolutely most important thing
you can do is to tell us how to reproduce the bug. Sometimes this is easy. "Open my design file,
select the program called
Bath Motion select the display tab and HCA dies". Or "Define 16 scenes
in a PCS switch and after completing the 16th scene, it doesn't show up on the list of scenes".
Now sometimes you can't reproduce the problem. So give us suggestions. For example, if you
have a problem where occasionally HCA crashes try and determine what might have been
happening at that time. Were you working with the user interface? Was HCA just sitting there?
Do you think that it died when some program or schedule got triggered off? Guess. Theorize. Be
a detective. Try and reproduce the problem yourself. Give us all the information you have: "HCA
dies sometimes at night. I think it has to do with my bathroom motion sensor program. Attached
is my HCA file. Send a M1 on the powerline to get my motion sensor program to start. It usually
seems to die only around sunrise".
The more information you provide the quicker the problem can be identified and fixed.
Hardworking programmers everywhere thank
good bug reporters.