Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 6—Rooms
4 The Home Control Assistant
In the same way that a device auto-off is configured, you can have up to three different auto-off
specifications. In the above example, 5 minutes after the room is tuned on – when it’s dark – the
room goes off. This means that any devices in the room configured to respond when the room
goes off, are sent a command to go off.
Hint: Even if the devices in the room have their own auto-off specifications, the room auto-off
operates independently of device auto-off specifications.
Device Interaction with rooms
Devices and rooms can interact in a relationship that allows you to build complex actions with only
the settings in the device and the room. Here is a simple example.
Suppose you have a room with two lights and a motion sensor.
The motion sensor is configured to participate in the room state. The two other devices are not.
One device is configured to turn on when dark at 50% and the other is configured to turn on when
dark at 80%. Neither light is configured to participate in the room state nor are they configured to
turn off when the room goes off.
Here is a time line of what happens:
1. The motion sensor detects motion so it sends a command that HCA receives.
2. Since the motion sensor is now on, the room becomes on.
3. Since the room have become on, the two lights are sent commands to turn on.
And all of this is accomplished without any additional work on your part except configuring the
devices and the room.
You can also configure the room with an auto-off so that the devices turn off after a preset time.
Auto off can become a bit complicated with the configuration possible so this is covered in the
next section.
Device Auto Off
One problem with auto-off is that it can be very unyielding at times. Yes you want an auto off to
happen but sometimes you really wish it could be controlled.
Devices and rooms interact to make this possible. As part of the device properties you can
configure how auto off can be controlled. This is best show by example.
Example 1
Suppose a room contains a motion sensor and a switch. Here is what we want to have happen:
 You walk into the room. The motion sensor turns on the light and starts an auto-off timer.
 If you leave the room, when the timer expires the light goes out.
 If you stay in the room each time the motion sensor sees me, the timer is restarted
 If you change the light level using the switch, the time is canceled and not restarted until the
room is off and the motion sensor again sees something.
Here is the configuration for the motion sensor and the switch:
Motion sensor settings