Owner's Manual (Complete)

The Home Control Assistant 1
Chapter 1
What is the Home Control Assistant?
In today’s complex world, busy people can benefit from a home environment that anticipates their
needs and helps take care of itself. For instance, suppose your house could:
 Turn on outside and entryway lights at dusk every day, or before you get home from work on
weekdays?
 Automatically run the hot tub filter during the day, or start the heater, filter, and turn on the
lights all at the flick of one switch?
 Dim hall lights, turn off a ceiling light, and turn on the children’s night light at a preset time
every evening?
 Turn on kitchen lights, and start the coffee pot at the same time every weekday morning?
 Turn all the lights in the house on or off when you press one switch at your bedside?
The Home Control Assistant can help you program your house to automatically respond to your
typical schedule on weekdays, or a weekend or vacation schedule. You can set up schedules to
make your home looked lived in when you are away, and save energy by automatically turning
lights off after you’re in bed.
This chapter introduces the Home Control Assistant, and discusses the conventions of the guide
and common procedures of HCA. This chapter includes sections on:
 About this guide
 Quick tour of HCA
 Using the menus
 Using the status bar
 Using the properties dialog boxes
- Home Properties dialog box
- HCA Properties dialog box
 The conventions used in this guide
- Procedures and operations common to HCA
- Common Windows procedures used in HCA
About this guide
This user guide walks you through the process for setting up a typical device, and shows you how
to set up more complex schedules and programs to help automate your home. This first chapter
includes an introduction to and quick tour of the Home Control Assistant (HCA), showing what
HCA looks like and discussing the use of menus, status bar, and the Properties dialog boxes. This
is followed by a section on the conventions and typical Windows procedures used in this guide.
This guide is set up in chapters that discuss the major procedures that you can use in working with
HCA. In addition to the main chapters, there are appendixes that describe specific features of HCA
or the automation hardware supported.