Owner's Manual (Complete)

The Home Control Assistant
1
Chapter 6
Rooms
Each device, program, and group is stored in a folder. That folder can be a “folder” or a “room”.
A folder is simply for organizational purposes. It allows you to have a device, for example, call
“Lamp” in one folder and a different device called “Lamp” in another folder. That is really all a
folder does.
A Room is in many ways similar to a folder except it come with a set of extra semantics.
A Room is like a device in that:
 It can be on or off. I can be scheduled.
 It can be operated on by a program.
 An auto-off condition can be established for it.
 In can participate in a power track graph.
This chapter describes how Rooms work in HCA and includes these topics:
 How rooms are created
 What circumstances have a room be ON or OFF.
 Working with rooms: Turning on and off, scheduling, using in Programs
 Device interaction with rooms
How rooms are created
A room is created using a similar mechanism as a folder is created. Right-click on the Rooms root
in the design pane and select New Room from the popup menu.
The room is added then to the design with the default name “New Room” and you can then change
the name to something more meaningful.
You can also create a new room when you add a new device, program, or group to your design. In
the first wizard step you can choose an existing room or folder name or you can enter a new name.
A room is created with that name if that is what you do.
Hint: If you have a folder, perhaps from a design created using a previous version of HCA, and
you would like it to work as a room, you can drag the folder icon in the design pane and
drop it into the room tree. It then becomes a room.