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Changing LED's for all the lights in the house with alarm


jakelle21

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I have found several threads that partially answer the question and was wondering if someone could expand on to make the programming of all the LED's in my project change color when the status of my alarm system changes, without having to go to each dimmer. Currently I have gone and individually assigned LED colors depending on the status of the alarm system. For example when the alarm has been armed to home, all the LED's are set to fucia and when the alarm is armed to away, the LED's go to red. For 9 dimmers, each requiring 4 lines of programming, times 3 different setting (alarm armed to away, home and disarmed), the lines of programming grow quickly to almost a 100 lines. When the alarm system has been disarmed I have programmed each dimmer to go back to the default setting of blue on top and black on bottom when on and the reverse when off. As the Christmas season approaches I would like to be able to set the default setting to say "green" (or whatever feastive color I choose) on top for on, black on bottom for off etc. It was a considerable bit of work to set it up the way I have it and don't like the idea of having to go and reprogram each dimmer in my project for the holidays, then have to set it back to the default setting come the new year!

I'm not well versed in the use of variables but think that will likely be the answer, given what I read in other threads. Any help is much appreciated.

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Changing all LED colors like that will be a pain and lines and lines of code. Best thing is to pick one dimmer/switch/keypad and change colors on it.

There's no feature at this time in composer to change all or selected device's LED colors very easily.

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I've done the same and it's miles and miles of code. It can be done but it's very tedious.

You could make a copy of your current C4 file. Go in and change all the colors to whatever color(s) you like. It's still a lot of work but a least you're not having to go in a re-write all the code. Rename the new "color" file and just load your old file after Christmas. Just a thought!

Edit: punctuation

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I sure wish Composer had the idea of 'collections'. Imagine (if you will) if Composer provided a 'virtual dimmer' that existed not just in rooms, but at each level in the hierarchy (floors, buildings, project). Then, when you modify it, Director goes away and find *all* dimmers that exist at that level in the hierarchy and lower, and applies the same changes to each one.

All lights off? Just turn off the 'virtual dimmer' that lives at the project level. Etc. etc. etc.

Of course you'd need a virtual object for each type of hardware, but again that's pretty trivial - Composer enumerates the hardware, and shows a virtual object of the same type at each level in the tree.

This is exactly the kind of mindless book-keeping that computers are supposed to be good at.

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I sure wish Composer had the idea of 'collections'. Imagine (if you will) if Composer provided a 'virtual dimmer' that existed not just in rooms, but at each level in the hierarchy (floors, buildings, project). Then, when you modify it, Director goes away and find *all* dimmers that exist at that level in the hierarchy and lower, and applies the same changes to each one.

All lights off? Just turn off the 'virtual dimmer' that lives at the project level. Etc. etc. etc.

Of course you'd need a virtual object for each type of hardware, but again that's pretty trivial - Composer enumerates the hardware, and shows a virtual object of the same type at each level in the tree.

This is exactly the kind of mindless book-keeping that computers are supposed to be good at.

I do not think this would work by simply adding the feature to Composer. Composer is just an interface into the system for programming. The feature you outlined would need to be built into the software that runs the system which is Director and other daemons that control the system. It is probably far more complex then what you have outlined.

What you are somewhat describing is a lighting scene, with a binding to a keypad.

I do however think your idea is fantastic.

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