How to save and later restore the state of a room

[Clark]

I have a couple of situations where I'm needing to save the state of a room (if it is on) and then restore it later.  For example,

 

Someone presses the callbox button while I'm watching a movie in the bedroom.

I'd like to pause the movie, display either the video feed from the callbox or my nearest security camera and then return to the movie when I'm ready.

 

Another example would be I'm watching a movie in the bedroom.  One of the outside motion sensors gets tripped.  I'd like to pause the movie, play a short audio announcement that the perimeter alarm in region such-and-such was tripped, and display the video feed from the appropriate outside camera until I press a button on the remote.  Then I'd like to return to my movie.

 

I've found where I can save the current device into a variable but I don't see where i can then use that value to select a device.

 

I am also wanting to turn on exterior lights in the vicinity of the motion detector and then return to their previous state afterwards.  e.g. a particular light may be on at 10%, I'd go to 100% for 5 minutes and then return to 10%.  Is there any way to do that other than writing macros for each motion detector that stores all the light values on a light-by-light basis and then restores them afterwards?

 

I'm thinking there must be some problems with doing this because my dealer is supposed to be working on it but I'm 2 years down the road and still no solution.

 

I like a lot of the control4 AV control stuff and user interface but it really seems to be lacking in programming tools for smarthome capability.  Are there any other platforms out there that offer more sophisticated control or better programming capability? 

 

Thanks.

Clark

 

[vitali]

Do you have access to C4 KB? There is detail explanation how to do that. It worked for me.

[vitali]

KB Article ID: 751

[Cyknight]

Set variable current device to the state of (your created variable) - action under the room variables for each room (break out the list by pressing the + sign in front of room variables).

 

How often do you actually CHANGE what level each light is on? No really, how often? Because the easy way to do this is to just activate a lighting scene for the outside lights again after it's done it's motion setting - forcing a light to go back to 50% when it's already at that level is not a problem (ie you want motion A to set light A to 100%, but not light B and C, after 5 minutes, you trigger the the scene that sets all lights to 50%).

[Clark]

vitali: I don't know if I have access to KB or not.  I'll explore that.  I'm not a dealer but i did recently sign up to be a developer so maybe I do.

 

CYknight:  Thank you.  You're right!  That's all I needed to do was set the room variable back to the value I saved in my created variable.

 

Fair question on how often I change outside scenes.  I have a scene that sets light levels automatically at dusk and then changes to a "late night" mode at one time on weeknights and a different time on weekends.  However, if I'm having guests over, then I run another scene that turns up the brightness of some lights and turns on additional lights.  I have 8 motion detectors and 9 outside cameras.  I can certainly add a "having a party" variable and write the light handling logic for each of the motion detectors.  As a former programmer/systems analyst that doesn't seem to be a very eloquent solution just because if I change change how I like to handle the outside light stuff later (e.g. change times when things happen, change light levels or scenes when Christmas decorations are out, etc), I have to go back and change all the macros too.  Maybe I could just use macros to do everything and make the scenes minimalistic and just execute macros when they're enacted as well?  That way maybe all the logic could be in macros.  Or . . . maybe the simplest thing is exactly what you suggest and I just have to resign myself to changing things in multiple places.  As you can see, I'm quite naive about all this Control4 stuff.  It does seem that it should be a basic capability to save the entire state of a room so you can depart from it temporarily and then return.

 

In any event, thanks so much for your help.

 

You don't happen to know how to attach a snapshot from the callbox camera to an email notification do you?  My dealer said they couldn't do that because it was in a different format than the CCTV's.  Right now when I receive a "callbox button pressed" email notification I have to login to my CCTV DVR and back up the cameras to the time noted on the email to see who was there.  Also, those camera views are kind of far back because they weren't put there just to look at people pressing the callbox button.

[Cyknight]

If you have three scenes, you just need to set tracking on those three scenes properly (ie at scene final level and track based on "all").

Then on motion change do the following:

 

Create a Macro, Outdoor light tracker

 

On each motion:

WHEN motion sense motion:

Execute Macro

delay 100ms

Turn on light/lights you want to 100% for that motion

 

The Macro itself:

Variable scene 1 tracker (boolean)

variable scene 2 tracker

etc if you need more

 

Macro:

IF scene 1 is active

-set scene 1 tracker to true

If scene 2....you get the idea

...

RESET timer for lights to go back on

 

Then under that timer:

WHEN timer expires:

IF scene1 tracker is true

-activate scene 1

..and so on

set varailbe scene 1 to false

set variable scene 2 to false

..and so on to 'reset' the tracking states.

 

This way, for the 'return to previous' you only have to create ONE macro and execute from each motion, at the same time leaving you full ability to have separate lights turn on based on each motion.

It also leaves you only a single place to edit (ie remove or add more possbile scenes).

[Cyknight]

Attaching snapsohots isn't something I do often. But in your case - the question is what callbox do you have? If it's the C4 one - I'll have to dash your hope right there, while the explenation you were givin isn't correct/accurate the end result is the same - you can't.

If it's some other brand - it would depend on if/how you're seeing it now, if it's visible on your current touchscreens under IP cams, there MAY be a way - but I'm not really the best to answer exactly how.

 

I do know for that sort of thing, Chowmain's notification suite is probably you best bet, so look that up on the houselogix store - it may well contain some info on the hows and whats.

[Clark]

Cyknigt:  Very nice solution for the motion detect scene changes.  Thank you.

 

The callbox is a C4 callbox so I guess I'm stuck on that one.  I'll check out the Chowmain stuff.  Again, Thank you.

 

Clark

[vitali]

Hi, Might be I missed something about motion macro, but my question is: what if few motion detectors will sense movement at same time? will it work?

[Cyknight]

Hi, Might be I missed something about motion macro, but my question is: what if few motion detectors will sense movement at same time? will it work?

As the first motion stores the last scene, and you RESET (this is important, reset, not start) the timer, it essentially just continues turning on more lights, keeping them on while motion is detected - then after that timer expires goes back to the original.