# Terminology

## action | Examples of actions in Thinking Home include operating devices, sending email or instant messages, making an announcement or running a script.

## appliance | An appliance, for home automation purposes, can be any electrical device. This includes ordinary lamps, lamps with their own dimming controls built-in, motors, heaters (such as coffee makers) and any other device. An appliance module simply switches power on and off.

## controller | A controller connects to the Macintosh and receives info from Thinking Home that it then transmits (via the home’s electrical wiring) to control lamps and appliances. There are several models of controllers and most of them can also report activity observed on the home wiring. In addition, some can store scheduled events and responders. Examples of controllers include the PowerLinc V2, ActiveHome Pro, the ActiveHome, the CP-290 and the FireCracker (CM-17).

## device | A device corresponds to the hardware being controlled, such as a lamp module or appliance module.

## event | An event is a timed action, such as turning off the living room lamp every day at 6 PM.

## house code | A house code is a letter from A to P that is used, along with a unit ID, to identify an X-10 lamp or appliance module. Each module has a dial on it for setting its house code. Any module can use any house code, but most people tend to pick a house code and use it for all of their modules. In that case, each module is distinguished by its unit ID.

## lamp | A lamp, for home automation purposes, is what you normally think of as a lamp: an incandescent bulb. A lamp module supplies power to lamps and can dim them, but it is not made for supplying power to an electronic lamp-dimming circuit or transformer. So lamps that already have dimming controls built-in should not be used with a lamp module.

## module | A module is a piece of hardware that can control a lamp or appliance by supplying power to the lamp or appliance or switching power off. The module plugs into a standard wall outlet and the lamp or appliance power cord plugs into the module. In this way, the module can control the power supplied to the lamp or appliance.

## responder | A responder is a sequence of actions that are triggered when the controller observes a specified action on the home wiring. When such an action triggers a responder, the controller will respond by sending out your desired actions. For example, a motion sensor may send “A1 On”, which triggers a responder that causes the controller to send “Brighten A5 by 100%” and the A5 lights would brighten smoothly when a person enters the room.

## script | Scripts are like simple, short programs that run on the Mac and can make decisions. They offer many options that can make your home automation setup very intelligent. Thinking Home supports AppleScript as well as all the common scripting languages like Perl, Python, PHP and Unix shell scripts. See the Script Examples for more details.

## unit ID | A unit ID is a number from 1 to 16 that is used, along with a house code, to identify an X-10 lamp or appliance module. Each module has a dial on it for setting its unit ID. Any unit ID can be used with any modules, but they need to be unique or multiple modules will respond to actions sent that house code and unit ID. In some cases, this is desirable as a way of grouping sets of lamps to operate together, for example.