Actions - Control a Device

[randy]

This first topic covers the Action "Control a Device". It can be used to control any device in the system that is controllable. Underneath is a dropdown of all of the devices available for control. They are arranged in the order of Label2 (default "Floor"), Label 1 (default "Room") then by the Device name.




When you choose a device, you will be presented with the control options available. If it is a dimmer control, it will be OFF plus all the dim levels plus ON, sometimes there will be "ON last level". If it is a thermostat setpoint it will be in degrees, etc. Below is a simple binary (ON-OFF) device.





After you pick the value to which this action will set the device, you can choose to delay the execution of this action. Click on the little pencil icon to the right of the time and you will be presented with a popup for days, hours, minutes and seconds.





Click on one of those items and you will be presented with a picker for the available values.





Click on the value in the picker popup and it will populate the appropriate time field. You can do this for each of the four fields. When you are done click "Submit".






Then you will have created an action with a delay. Below it is 15 minutes.





We'll get to how Delayed Device Actions are handled a little later in this thread. For now we are going to cover Advanced Editing options for this particular action. In the screenshot above you will see the red airplane icon directly under the delay time. If you click on it there will be a new option of "Set Device String to:"






Since this is the only advanced option for controlling a device, lets go through the steps. We're going to see what this does. The first thing to do is to enter the new String value. Like most of HomeSeer's text editing, you are presented with a text entry popup. Enter the new string value can click on "Submit".






Continued next post

[randy]

You can see the Event as it now is - it will set the Value of the Device to ON and set the new string value.





Here is a screenshot of the device before the event is run.





We're going to manually run the event by clicking on the "Run Event icon . The event was run manually 12:24:02 PM.





Since it is a device with a single action and it is a delayed event, nothing actually happens. The Event is not put in a holding queue for 15 minutes, what it does is to automatically create a new event to perform the action 15 minutes later. The primary event has now run in its entirety. The new event is automatically placed in a group named "Delayed Actions" with a trigger of 12:39:02 PM and the same action as the event shown above. This event is also designed to remove itself after triggering. When the event triggers, it will perform the action then delete itself. You can see the green check mark beside options, showing that one or more is selected.





Here are the Advanced options for the event. We'll cover more about all of the "Advanced Options" later.





After the Delayed Action (commonly referred to as a "Delayed Device Action") event runs, the device value, status and string values of the device are set. Below is a screenshot of the device after the action is run. You will notice that the device icon and control buttons show that the device is now ON, but the string now reads "This is a new string" instead of the customary "On".





If we look at the Advanced tab for this device you can see that the Status and Value have been set to ON, but there is a string value that we have set with the event. If the String value is blank, the Device Manager shows the Value text in its place.





Below we will Set Device String to: "clear" and manually run the event.





Now if you look at the device in the Device Manager, you will see that text is back to the customary "On"





Looking at the Advanced tab shows the string value is now blank.





This covers what the "Control a Device" action does as well as how to use advanced editing options and Delayed Device Actions. All actions do not offer Advanced Editing options, nor do many offer the option of a delay. In the remaining Actions posts we will outline each of the actions and discuss any options when they are available.