Two things worthy of mention here:

1. Turn all the Downstairs Lights off at the same time from somewhere else in the house.

   There are several places this occurs and we will just talk about two.  Since there are several PCs throughout the house, we want to be able to turn off the lights in a room we know there isn't anybody in (assuming we just left that area).  ECS has a really nice to use web interface so we can control just about anything just like we were sitting in front of Mary.  On one of the group screens, there is a button defined that calls an event to turn off all the lights defined downstairs.  This is one of the benefits of having written cascading events so we don't have to explicitly call every light downstairs we want to turn off.  For this example, I will trace the event through every level down to the command that turns off one of the downstairs lights.  We will start with the button press from the web interface group screen:

   If Icon-Click1 Is Lite Dn
   Then Set, Grp, Down Set 0            ->Set a variable (Item Type: Number)
   Then Grp, Downstairs Set 0           ->Turn off all the lights downstairs (Item Type: Number)
   Then Event-Call Set Set, Grp, Down   ->Call the event to reset the timers to zero
   Then Event-Call Set Grp, Downstairs  ->Call the event to turn off the lights
   
   We won't follow the hierchy of the timers but suffice it to say the same sort of thing happens.  We called the event 'Grp, Downstairs' so lets go look at it:

   Then Area, Theater Set Grp, Downstairs    ->Each variable carries the state of the
   Then Area, Office Set Grp, Downstairs     ->area it will be responsible for.
   Then Area, Garage Set Grp, Downstairs
   Then Event-Call Set Area, Theater         ->Each event here controls an area. 
   Then Event-Call Set Area, Office
   Then Event-Call Set Area, Garage
   
   We are going to follow the main theater lights and we know those must be in the theater area so lets have a look at that event:

   Then Rm, Theater Set Area, Theater        ->Now we break each area down into rooms
   Then Rm, Hall, Down Set Area, Theater     ->for both the variable...
   Then Rm, Bath, Down Set Area, Theater
   Then Rm, Laundry Set Area, Theater
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Theater           ->... and for the event.
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Hall, Down
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Bath, Down
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Laundry
   
   The theater lights must be in the Rm, Theater so lets go look at that event:

   Then St, Theater Set Rm, Theater          ->Then we go down to the light level and
   Then St, Rec Room Set Rm, Theater         ->the same thing happens for the variable...
   Then Event-Call Set Lt, Theater           ->... and for the event.  Then we go to each
   Then Event-Call Set Lt, Rec Room          ->event for every light.
   
   Here we had a little trouble since we already had an item with the name Lt, Theater (that was obviously the case for all the lights) so we have an item that holds the state we want to test in the event Lt, Theater.  This is also quite a bit longer since there are many states this light can respond to.  Here is the event:

   If St, Theater Is 0            ->The first three levels are standard across all the
   Then Lt, Theater Set Off       ->incandescent lights (0,1, and 6)
   If St, Theater Is 1
   Then Lt, Theater Set On
   If St, Theater Is 6
   Then Lt, Theater Set 61%
   ;
   If St, Theater Is 103          ->There are a couple of lights that require some
   Then Lt, Theater Set 3%        ->levels for the purposes of slowly incrementing the
   If St, Theater Is 106          ->level until the light is turned on completely; this
   Then Lt, Theater Set 6%        ->is one light that requires such abilities.  The
   If St, Theater Is 110          ->application is explained in Sunrise Simulation.
   Then Lt, Theater Set 10%
   If St, Theater Is 113
   Then Lt, Theater Set 13%
   If St, Theater Is 116
   Then Lt, Theater Set 16%
   If St, Theater Is 119
   Then Lt, Theater Set 19%
   If St, Theater Is 123
   Then Lt, Theater Set 23%
   If St, Theater Is 126
   Then Lt, Theater Set 26%
   If St, Theater Is 129
   Then Lt, Theater Set 29%
   If St, Theater Is 132
   Then Lt, Theater Set 32%
   If St, Theater Is 135
   Then Lt, Theater Set 35%
   If St, Theater Is 139
   Then Lt, Theater Set 39%
   If St, Theater Is 142
   Then Lt, Theater Set 42%
   If St, Theater Is 145
   Then Lt, Theater Set 45%
   If St, Theater Is 148
   Then Lt, Theater Set 48%
   If St, Theater Is 152
   Then Lt, Theater Set 52%
   If St, Theater Is 155
   Then Lt, Theater Set 55%
   If St, Theater Is 158
   Then Lt, Theater Set 58%
   If St, Theater Is 161
   Then Lt, Theater Set 61%
   If St, Theater Is 165
   Then Lt, Theater Set 65%
   If St, Theater Is 200
   Then Lt, Theater Set On
   

2. Office Motion Control and why.

   There are a couple of times we don't want the office lights to turn on.  First of all, the door to our office enters in the middle of the room.  In order to cover the entire office with one motion detector, it has to point down the hall.  At the other end of the hall is the theater which is reason number one.  The office is very visible to the theater and during movies we only want light from the theater lights and the TV.

   The second reason is I work at home and need to keep the lights on during the day.  There are times I don't move around a lot so the timer will expire and all the lights will turn off.  The fix for this is to set the office timer for around 9 hours and disable the motion detector (or keep it from setting the timer associated with it).

   The fix for challenge number one is simple.  We do something similar with the theater lights with a movie timer which we describe in Theater.  When this movie timer is set to anything greater than zero, the motion control for the office is turned off.  If it is set to zero (or counted down to zero), it is turned back on.  This is only performed upon the state change so we can control it elsewhere.  It looks like this:

   If Timer, Movie Is Now 0
   Then Motion Ctl, Office Set On
   If Timer, Movie Is GT Now 0
   Then Motion Ctl, Office Set Off
   
   After experimenting, I came up with the following icon click event for working at home that answers number two:

   BEGINIF Icon-Click1 Is 9 Hours            ->9 hours is the name of the icon
   If Motion Ctl, Office Is On               ->We wanted a toggle so it could be
   Then Motion Ctl, Office Set Off           ->controlled by one button both ways
   Then Timer, Office Set 32400              ->Set the timer for 9 hours
   Then Rm, Office Set 1                     ->Turn on all the office lights
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Office
   Then St, Ofc, Ovhd, Pam Set 6             ->Change the state of the lights not over
   Then St, Ofc, Lamp, Pam Set 0             ->my desk since I am the only one at home.
   Then St, Ofc, Ovhd, Ctr Set 6
   Then Event-Call Set Lt, Ofc, Ovhd, Pam    ->Call the events to execute the above
   Then Event-Call Set Lt, Ofc, Lamp, Pam    ->changes.
   Then Event-Call Set Lt, Ofc, Ovhd, Ctr
   Else If Motion Ctl, Office Is Off
   Then Motion Ctl, Office Set On            ->In case we want to change back to motion
   Then Rm, Office Set 1                     ->control on; turn all the office lights
   Then Event-Call Set Rm, Office            ->on and set the timer for 120 seconds so
   Then Timer, Office Set 120                ->the lights will turn back off if no
   ENDIF                                     ->movement is detected in 2 minutes.
   
   There is one more way motion control can be turned back on and that is by Sign of Life changing to false.  An example of this can be found in section 3 of Sign of Life on the Inside Lights page.