Schedules
Naturally, schedules are a big part of home automation. A schedule is made up of events and responders. An event is something that is scheduled to happen at a certain time each day. A responder is triggered, not by time, but by other actions. For example, a responder might be triggered by a motion sensor reporting motion and it will respond by taking actions like turning on a light in the hallway.
Schedules can be carried out by a controller or by the Mac. Controller models vary in what, if anything, they can store. The advantage of a schedule stored in a controller is that you can turn off the Mac and let the controller take care of things. The advantage of the Mac schedule is that it can perform Mac-only actions, such as email, instant messaging, logging and scripts.
To open the Schedules window, select Schedules from Thinking Home’s Window menu.
To add a new event:
- Press the Add Event button
or select New Event from Thinking Home’s File menu. - In the newly opened Event Info window, change the days, time and other options as needed. Note that some options may not be available if the controller does not offer them.
- Customize the actions as desired. Again, some actions may unavailable, depending on the controller.
- To add more actions to the event, press the + button. Remove unwanted actions with the — button.
To add a new responder:
- Press the Add Responder button
or select New Responder from Thinking Home’s File menu. - In the newly opened Responder Info window, change the trigger action as needed. Note that some options may not be available if the controller does not offer them.
- Customize the actions as desired. Again, some actions may unavailable, depending on the controller.
- To add more actions to the responder, press the + button. Remove unwanted actions with the — button.