Introduction

The Home Control Assistant is a software program that runs on any computer that uses the Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000,  XP, or Vista operating system.  It works with automation interfaces available from Marrick Limited, X10-USA, SmartHome.com, Elk Products, and Lightolier Controls to control lights and appliances in your home using powerline carrier (X10), RF and IR technology.  HCA also can control any Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) device.  Powerline carrier - X10 or UPB -  uses your house wiring to send signals to receiving devices attached to any light or appliance in your home that you want to control remotely.

Setting up your home using automation is very simple.  First, unplug each light or appliance you want to control, then plug it into a receiving module, and then plug that module into any house electrical receptacle.  There are replacement wall switches for lights that you want to control that way.  There is a  method where you set or program a code that identifies this particular device in your home.  Each device is set with a different code so they all can be uniquely identified.  You can also plug control panels - keypads - into any house electrical outlet and send signals to remotely control any lights or appliances attached to receiving modules.  Wireless remote controllers are also available.

HCA provides:

The HCA display

The HCA window is divided into two sections.  On the left is the design pane, which displays each element of your home design organized as an outline.  On the right is the display pane which displays either floor plans, if you have DXF files or picture files, or displays icons in a grid pattern.  The two panes can be resized by dragging the splitter bar between the two panes.  If the display pane is re-sized, floor plans are re-scaled in such a way as to preserve their shape.

While HCA does not contain a drawing editor, it does import or link to DXF files or picture files created by most popular drawing programs.  If you would like more information about drawing programs and their use with HCA, click here.

If you don't have floor plans, you can still create floors in your design.  In this case the display pane operates like the Windows Explorer when in large icon view.   You have the option to have HCA auto arrange icons by name, or by their housecode and unitcode.  If you want, create your own arrangements by dragging icons into any order and placement needed.

HCA Wizards

HCA is a different program than most that in use on your computer.  It is running all the time, but you may not actually do anything with it for long periods.   You install HCA, work for a few hours creating your design, turn it loose to run your home, then over the next few weeks tune the design.  After that you may only change the design very rarely - maybe not for several weeks.  Using a program like this it's easy to forget just how to do some things.  HCA contains wizards that help with most tasks - they guide you through the process through a series of dialog boxes.

This is a page from the schedule entry wizard.  In their title bar, all wizards show the number of steps needed to complete the task.  The navigation buttons on the bottom move you either forward to the next step, or back to a previous step.  If the wizard has reasonable defaults for the next steps, you can press the Finish button to complete the task without going through the remaining steps.

With wizards, you always know what to do next.

The Visual Scheduler

One of the tools that you can use in developing your home plan is called the Visual Scheduler.  The Visual Scheduler allows you to quickly create schedules for devices in your home using a drag and drop process.

When using the Visual Scheduler, a time bar for each of your devices is drawn in the display pane.  Creating new entries in your home schedule is done by dragging ON or OFF time marks from the bottom of the time bar upwards and dropping them at the time you want the device to go ON or OFF.  The time bar is divided into three sections where the middle (in yellow) represents daylight hours.  To schedule for the same time each day of the year, use the time markers on the left side of the time bar.  To schedule for a time relative to sunrise or sunset, use the time markers on the right side of the bar.   Using the left side markers, you can create an entry in your home schedule for 4:15pm.  Using the left side markers, you can create an entry for Sunrise minus 30 minutes.  If you are working with devices that you control with IR signals, the Visual Scheduler has IR time markers rather than ON and OFF.

The Visual Scheduler is a quick way to create schedules for the lights and appliances in your home.

The Visual Programmer

One of the difficulties of home automation has always been that once you moved beyond creating simple schedules for lights and appliances, you entered a world beyond the capabilities of most non-technical users.  If you wanted to create a sequence of operations that happen with the touch of a button, and possibly control which operations happen based upon some condition, you were forced to create a program using some obscure and arcane scripting language.

The Home Control Assistant eliminates that hurdle.  HCA contains the capabilities needed to create extremely sophisticated operations without a programming or scripting language.   This is done using the Visual Programmer.

Using the Visual Programmer, programs are drawn on the programming canvas using a drag and drop method.  The Visual Programmer contains over 50 different elements that you can add to your programs.

Like the lights and appliances in your home, HCA programs can be scheduled to start at any time.  HCA programs can also be started remotely from any thing that sends a signal into HCA - wireless, X10, or UPB.

While HCA will not make programmers out of non-programmers, we have eliminated one of the major difficulties in moving home automation beyond simple lights and appliance scheduling for the average user.

Tour Ends

This completes this very brief tour of the Home Control Assistant.  Space and time only permitted us to show you a few of the features of our program.  We hope that from what you saw, you will be interested in putting the Home Control Assistant to work in your own home.

To find out more about HCA you may want to explore this web site.  In particular you may want to check out the HCA World section which more fully describes the Automation hardware we work with.  Finally the Frequently Asked Questions page, and the Technical Notes directory have more information.

But the best way to see what HCA has to offer is to download the software and try it out for yourself.  We offer a fully functional 30 day time limited trail version.  And if you are a reader, we have a complete User Guide available in several formats.