Area Delayed Lighting Scenes

[AS2]

I want to program my C4 system to turn on lights in a certain order, with a set delay for certain areas.The end result --> when i arrive home, the first lights to come on are the front hallway, but then I want to delay the kitchen lights by 3 secs so as I'm walking further into my home, those lights are just dimming on. Another few seconds and the living room lights come one. This is similar to the effect on the C4 promo video when the mother arrives home from her 'long day'.

the way I figure I could do this is to actually program each event individually, with time delay in order, until the final lighting scheme is the same as one of my preset scenes, let say 'Mood'. At the end of the string of events, I will execute 'Mood' (with no concievable change) just so that the system is now recognizing the correct scene across the system.

Is there a shortcut to programming this kind of thing? Perhaps I should set 'sub-scenes' like hallway 'Mood', kitchen 'Mood', Living Room 'Mood' and execute them with the delay in order...

One other related question, when you make regular lighting scenes, and you add fixtures to program, sometimes the order they appear dictates the order they turn on/off - even if only slightly noticable. I'd like the ability to adjust which fixtures appear first in that screen (left to right) to control that...but haven't found a way to do it. Even if you change the way they appear in the System Design pane, they still show up in the same order in the Lighting Scenes box...

[zeropointD]

I have done this in my house with a sort of demo button to show off the system to people we have over and I have programmed it in the way you describe for the exact effect that you are referring to. I tried it with a lighting scene and the final lighting result is the same but the "Wow" effect of having the lights slowly "crawl" their way across the house can't be matched by the easier lighting scene route.

I start at the front door and dim up to preset levels over 2 second with 500 millisecond delays between each light. Then obviously place each light in the chain one after another in the programming. I think it looks great.

[Samer Shami]

Is there a shortcut to programming this kind of thing? Perhaps I should set 'sub-scenes' like hallway 'Mood', kitchen 'Mood', Living Room 'Mood' and execute them with the delay in order...

That sounds like a good idea. If the "sub-scenes" are "discrete" - in that they make sense to execute on their own - then use lighting scenes. If you have to place delays in between light circuits within one room, then you will have to manually program them rather than using a lighting scene. Ultimately you will probably end up with a mix of lighting scenes, turning individual lights on and delays within a boolean variable. This way, you can toggle the boolean variables and have the lighting scene execute. You can then link it a custom button.

Or even trickier!:

1) Create a dummy C4 light within your project.

2) Create a light scene with only that light in it. Call that light scene "Entry" or something akin.

3) When this light scene executes, get it to also toggle the boolean variable that you previously defined

4) Have the boolean variable execute the bulk of the lighting scene.

The benefit of this is that you now place the psuedo-lighting scene in amongst the other lighting scenes.

[AS2]

Is there a shortcut to programming this kind of thing? Perhaps I should set 'sub-scenes' like hallway 'Mood'' date=' kitchen 'Mood', Living Room 'Mood' and execute them with the delay in order...[/quote']

That sounds like a good idea. If the "sub-scenes" are "discrete" - in that they make sense to execute on their own - then use lighting scenes. If you have to place delays in between light circuits within one room, then you will have to manually program them rather than using a lighting scene. Ultimately you will probably end up with a mix of lighting scenes, turning individual lights on and delays within a boolean variable. This way, you can toggle the boolean variables and have the lighting scene execute. You can then link it a custom button.

Or even trickier!:

1) Create a dummy C4 light within your project.

2) Create a light scene with only that light in it. Call that light scene "Entry" or something akin.

3) When this light scene executes, get it to also toggle the boolean variable that you previously defined

4) Have the boolean variable execute the bulk of the lighting scene.

The benefit of this is that you now place the psuedo-lighting scene in amongst the other lighting scenes.

Totally cool idea, I will try that. It'd be nice to have it sitting there with my lighting scenes!