Advanced Lighting Agent - tutorial

[shareez]

Hey guys,

has anyone found a better source to learn more about the advanced lighting agent? I read the C4 documentation and was much more confused. They used to be much better with using examples to teach but now i'm just lost. There are tracking, delay, and rate options? I know there are more options but I just want to learn how to make all the lights in my house flash when the alarm has been in an alarm state for some time. And how to deactivate the flashing. I see the "show flash option" at the top but I am lost after I add the loads to the list.

Somebody please help

[sdmat]

Nothing?

[msgreenf]

There is a dealer training that I did which was really good. But it's not something I can share.

[prabeau]

I gave up…..

[Cyknight]

Blinking lights in the house is achieved by creating two lighting scenes (r to be exact a lighting scene plus a toggle scene) - one for on one for off, then have a timer toggle the main (on) scene.

Rate is simply how fast a dimmer ramps.

Delay is to build in a .. delay: Say you have a switch and a dimmer, rate the dimmer at 8 seconds, delay the switch for 4 so the dimmer starts first and the switch waits4 seconds to turn off); Or you can use it to cascade a number of lights to turn on one after the other.

Note that delay is only useable on the newer light options (gen3 lighting and panel lighting), so is flash, so is scene ramp/fade (ie press and hold) as well as the option to ignore, and so is multiple steps for each load

Tracking is used to determine when a scene is active or not based on real-time light-loads. This has lots of options and settings and can get a little complex but I'll try and give a brief overview.

*Main option: any load or all loads - all loads means EVERY (tracked) load in the scene needs to be at the settings determined for that load for the scene to be considered active. Any then means that only one lights has to be at those settings to consider the scene active.

*Load options: here you set if a load is tracked or not, tracking options are "Off", On (for dimmers anything 1% or above), On at (exact) % (second drop-down appears) Or at scene final level - meaning that if the scene you're editing has a dimer go to 80% by the time the scene is completely done, then that light only counts as valid to state the scene is active if at 80%.

Combining these two - main and load - gives you a lot of options to determine when a scene is active (OUTSIDE) of triggering the scene - which allows you to tie programming to the scene itself that can be triggered in more ways then using the scene directly, allows you to determine how buttons tied to scene toggles behave (ie when they turn lights on or off) and a lot of other things. Some care needs to be taken here too as it's easy to lose track of all this.

All this is far from all encompassing obviously, but perhaps it helps a few get further in.

If you "just want lighting scenes" you can simply ignore all the options and create scenes - the only thing you may want to look at is "rate" as it sets how quickly each dimmer goes to the level you set.

Giving up is silly...

[prabeau]

"Giving up is Silly….." not if it means I don't have to make dinner its not.=)

When I said I gave up I meant trying to get the full capability of Advanced Scenes, just couldn't figure out where its options made it better then the regular

lighting scenes but thanks to you I will probably be making dinner after I have made all the lights flash throughout the house. =D

Thank you Cyknight

[Cyknight]

But, but - you can't complain about someone else's dinner if you don't make it yourself from time to time

Much of the advanced lighting scenes added capability is/was in preparation for the new lighting devices that can do much more - one of the biggest advantages for the old stuff is the ability to directly toggle the scenes off of buttons and keeping track of active/inactive - to allow direct LED binding similar to to single lights.

[Godzilla]

yes,yes,and yes

you can even use other scences as the toggle, such as Home....and use Away as its toggle, instead of creating a toggle for Home

[prabeau]

Married 38 years never complained about any dinner and never will.

Lighting scenes are another matter altogether …..

[urbanmark]

Helpful Cyknight, thanks!

[sdmat]

Helpful yes.

I have several dimmers I'd like to control with a config keypad. I created a scene "Basement cans" (both lights on). I linked the button so that the keypad press activates the scene. HE created a "toggle" scene with light lights off. How do I get the next press of the keypad button to activate the "toggle" scene? The press seems only to turn on the light.

Also, can we make a keypad button hold dims a scene like a dimmer switch? Then a press and hold could dim the two lights to where I like them.

Thanks,

Scott

[Cyknight]

Connect the button to the toggle option on the "Basement Cans" scene vs the activate option - you'll need to activate tracking on that scene for best result (I suggest any load and "on" for both).

Press and hold only works for the new Gen3 lighting and panel lighting, not for the older gen wireless devices. This is done automatically on binding to a button, no changes required yes make sure the "ignore scene ramping" isn't checked.

[sdmat]

Thanks.

I'll give it a shot.

BTW, just got these new switches - bet they are gen3.

Scott

[Cyknight]

They'll look completely different then the old ones (which all look the same on the surface).

If it has clearly defined bumbs top and bottom and a little LED on the right side of each of these then its gen3 - if it's the top raised, bottom indented and led's on the very top and bottom - its previous version.

[sdmat]

Yep, the new ones.

Haven't tried new programming yet. Thanks for the support.

Scott

[ILoveC4]

Connect the button to the toggle option on the "Basement Cans" scene vs the activate option - you'll need to activate tracking on that scene for best result (I suggest any load and "on" for both).

Press and hold only works for the new Gen3 lighting and panel lighting, not for the older gen wireless devices. This is done automatically on binding to a button, no changes required yes make sure the "ignore scene ramping" isn't checked.

Press and hold works fine on the older devices...I use it all the time.

[Cyknight]

We're talking about the advanced lighting scenes' ability to ramp all loads in it up and down by linking- this is NOT possible for dimmers of the previous generations.

Not the older device's OWN top/bottom/toggle links to buttons to ramp their individual loads - which of course does still work.

[ericscales]

I've looked for this and haven't found the answer so apologies if it has already been asked. I'm trying to determine how to track the previous light levels (prior to activating a scene) so that I can return to those levels when deactivating.

For example, I have a "Doorbell" scene that flashes a few lights when the doorbell is pressed. My issue is, if the lights are already on and the scene activates, then I'm in the dark after the flashing scene is over. I tried using variables to store and return light levels, but quite certain I'm missing something obvious here.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[turls]

ericsales, I've done this successfully using variables, but it was before Advanced Lighting Agent. I think there is even a blog post about setting this up and that is where I found more guidance. I don't remember where though, if I find it I will post.

[Cyknight]

On whatever triggers the announcement add this in front of triggering the announcement:

Set variable [Light switch level storage] to the value of [Light switch in question] Light Level ~ do this for every light you're using this for, variable type should be number

*whatever else you programmed here

delay [long enough to finish the announcement and other programming]

Set value of [Light Switch] Light level to the value of variable [Light switch level storage] ~ again one line for every light used, this light level is a device variable so look there, not the basic panel of the light.

That's it.

It may be possible to check and set which scenes are active or not when the announcement triggers (before the lights start blinking) and Activate those that are active and involve the lights used for the blinking (store using Boolean variables), but unless it's a lot of lights it'll be easier (less lines) to do this way.

Advanced scenes do not break this in any way.

[ericscales]

Thanks for the help, guys. I'll give this a try and report back. I did find, that attempting to save the light level in a variable then return to that level upon scene activation/invoke and deactivation (respectively) doesn't seem to work. Looks like by the time the invoke/activate event fires, the light levels are already set to that of the scene.

Will try the other route to save in the announcement.

[Cyknight]

What you want to do is on whatever event triggers the announcement (say the doorbell) do the "saving" FIRST, then add a small delay (250ms should do) THEN trigger the announcement and so on.

[ericscales]

Worked perfect! Thanks for the help.

[chopedogg88]

does anyone know how to program the new dimmer keypad up/down buttons to ramp up/down the currently selected advanced lighting scene (scenes are being toggled on/off by the other keypad buttons...)?  does this require programming, or is there a way to configure this using connections or some other method.

 

I want to be able to turn on a lighting scene by pushing the keypad button, and then using the up/down buttons to ramp that entire scene up or down.

 

also would like the up / down buttons to control room volume, if music is playing in the room.

 

any/all suggestions are welcome!

[ILoveC4]

I just picked up a few of these earlier this week, and have installed one so far. I share some of your questions and look forward to doing around and figuring a few things out.  I haven't looked since Monday night when I installed it, but I did see there options to "follow last active scene" or something along those lines.