Tips

Working in the document window:

In the document window, you can navigate using the keyboard. Here is what the keys do:

To edit the selected item, press Return.
To do normal scrolling of the list, press Page Up, Page Down, Home and End.
To change the selection to the next item, press the Up Arrow and Down Arrow.
To expand or collapse the display of subordinate items, press the Right Arrow and Left Arrow.
To fully expand or collapse the selection, press the Option key with the Right Arrow and Left Arrow.
To expand or collapse the entire document's device list, press the Option and Shift keys with the Right Arrow and Left Arrow.

There are several uses for Drag & Drop:

To copy Devices, Events and Macros, use Drag & Drop.

To re-order the list of commands when editing a macro, you can drag the commands. This keeps the time delays intact, so it is useful for ordering commands sharing the same time delay.

To create Desktop Devices, drag a device to the Finder.

Copy & Paste work for most items you see, including Devices, Events, Macros, Macro Commands, Announcements and AppleScripts.

Applescript Support

Thinking Home supports AppleScript with a complete dictionary for referring to all items in a document. You can view the dictionary from any script editor. What is not visible there is the support for referring to devices in alternative ways. Just about any way you attempt to refer to a device will work. For example, the same device might be referred to as device 1, device "Coffee Maker", first device, "C1" ,device "C1", device "Coffee Maker" of document "Home Sweet Home" of application "Thinking Home", and so on. In addition, Thinking Home supports multiple ways of phrasing operations. For example, these three scripts are all equivalent…

tell application "Thinking Home"
	turn on the "Coffee Maker"
end tell
tell the "Coffee Maker" of application Thinking Home"
	turn on
end tell
tell application "Thinking Home"
	tell "Coffee Maker"
		turn on
	end tell
end tell

There are some features that are available only when the Option key is held down. Some are for convenience and some are for troubleshooting. In most cases, they are very seldom used. This is why they are made to be inconspicuous. These features include:

Save the EEPROM bytes when storing a schedule,
Log raw bytes during receipt from the interface,
Make 2-way devices report commands and changes in state,
Use absolute dimming from the remote control window,
Duplicate an item via Drag & Drop,
Display of actual device status in the remote window
Special keyboard navigation

Most users prefer to work with devices, events and macros using the familiar terms presented by Thinking Home. However, some people want to delve into the technical details of the EEPROM memory that holds the schedule of events and macros. X-10 has a PC utility, memory.exe, that reads a copy of the CM-11A EEPROM memory data and displays it as text. To create a file containing the memory image, hold down the Option key as a schedule download is completing. A file named Macro.~mp will be created and can be read by the PC utility. For CM-10 users, a similar file will be created, but there is no utility to read it -- interested parties must read the bytes directly.

The logging portion of Thinking Home goes to great lengths to convert the reported codes to terms that make sense to a normal user. Due to hardware limitations, software must sometimes make assumptions when translating these codes and, because of that, the results can sometimes be incorrect. For users who want to "troubleshoot" incorrect reports, Thinking Home can display the actual bytes reported by the interface. To log the actual bytes received, hold down the Option key when a report is arriving.

By default, two-way lamp and appliance modules do not report changes in their state when operated locally or commanded by X-10. These reports can be activated by holding down the Option key while pressing the On button for the device in the Remote Control window. To make the device stop reporting changes, hold down the Option key while pressing the Off button.

The brightness value displayed by the slider in the Remote Control window is simply a guess. Changes made with the slider control are sent as relative dim or brighten commands. Two-way lamp modules can change directly to a specified (absolute) brightness. To do this, hold down the Option key while using the slider control with a two-way lamp.

To duplicate an item via Drag & Drop, hold down the Option key while dragging a device, event or macro. This enables the item to be duplicated in its originating document window. Because devices must have a unique house code and unit ID combination, the new device will have the ID incremented to the next available ID in the document window.

Display actual on/off/dim level when selecting a device in the remote window. When you select a device in the Remote Control window while holding down the Option key, Thinking Home will get the actual status of the newly selected device and update the slider accordingly. This feature is limited by the capabilities of the interface and selected device hardware.

To show all of the subordinate items of a device in the document window, hold down the Option key when turning the arrow down. If you want all of the items for all of the devices in the window to be shown, hold down both the Option and Shift keys. Similar options for collapsing (hiding) items when turning the arrow up.

For those wanting to place microphones in several rooms, these are some considerations.

When you combine two microphones, you get a 3 dB reduction in gain before feedback. That essentially means half the volume for every two mics (dB refers to a ratio and is a logarithmic scale).

An automixer actively monitors to determine which microphone is being spoken into, and reduces the level for the others. If two people speak at the same time, it brings them both up, but lowers the output level so the same apparent volume and gain before feedback ratio is maintained. It will do this for all inputs it has. As a practical matter, if that many people are speaking at a time it's unintelligible, so it rarely matters. With the new "generation" of automixers it's virtually instantaneous.

This is the best solution for whole-house voice recognition applications, especially if paired with a PZM on the ceiling in each room or something similar.

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