Macro Designer

Simple and Useful!
One Button Starts Your "Coming Home" Macro

Would you like to know about one of the most powerful features of ActiveHome Pro software? We know from years of development that people find Macro's to be very powerful feature in home automation software. And we've designed the most powerful, yet simple to use, Macro Designer anywhere. You can use the ActiveHome Pro Macro Designer to group lights and electrical devices together into a single button command. 

Macros are powerful mini-routines that you customize to do powerful tasks.  If you want one button to perform multiple tasks, then you'll love the Macro Designer in ActiveHome Pro.

Here are some tasks you can automate with a macro in your home:

• Dim selected lights to create a soft romantic mood. Brighten other lights when you want to read a good book. Control all the lights in a room to create different moods.

• Impress your friends and neighbors with cinema-like lighting. One button can change the lighting for intermission. Hey, the movie is great, but it would be better if you had some hot buttery popcorn. Pause the movie and press "intermission" on a remote control and selected lights will brighten for you in a dramatic fashion. When you return from your snack bar, press another button and the lights will dim for you to continue the movie. This is cool stuff!

• End fumbling for your keys in the dark. Press the button on a keychain remote and watch a path of light illuminate from your car, over the sidewalk to the porch, and inside your home. Then be amazed as they turn off minutes after you pass.  Easily possible with when you create a "coming home" macro for your home. Your spouse will love it!

• Kids scared of the dark? Set them up with a wireless wall switch near their bed. When they press a button, selected lights can come on in their room - and automatically turn off after 15 minutes when they are back to sleep.  Use another button on the remote control to turn on hallway and bathroom lights prior to them heading to the bathroom in the middle of the night - and turn them off again after they get back into bed.  Save energy and a parents sanity!

• Keep the neighbor's dog off your lawn. Use motion sensors to automatically turn on the sprinkler system and yard lights whenever the neighbors dog comes visiting in the night. A macro will then turn off the sprinklers and lights a few minutes later. A few blasts of water and Bowser will soon learn to stay away.

• Your moods change, so can the lighting. Synchronize table lamps, floor lamps, ceiling lights and wall sconces to create different moods in a room.  When you're reading, you may want an intimate environment with the light next to your favorite chair fully on, while other lights in the room to be much dimmer. But other times, you have guests over and would rather have a bright party atmosphere. And when hosting a night of entertainment goes late into the night, you can change the mood into an after hours nightclub at home. You can even control the warm glow from a fireplace!  

• Hundred of other macros can be used throughout your home, limited only by your imagination.

Creating a Macro is Easy and Quick

The simplicity of Drag & Drop allows anyone to quickly build a macro. This example macro is designed to start the coffee pot and turn on the lights in the kitchen to get ready for breakfast. When you make a macro like this, you can activate it using a remote control, or set a timer so the events happen exactly when you want it to -- even before you get out of bed!

Start to Make a Macro
To create a new macro, click on the (+) button on the Macros bar in the Folder pane. When you create a new Macro, you start in a blank Macro Editor window.

Name Your Macro "Breakfast"
First, name your macro. Click into the Macro Name box, and type a new name. In this example, the Macro will be called "Breakfast." At this point you can also select the Macro's Trigger (remote command you use to start it), but ActiveHome will assign one automatically, which will usually be fine.

Next, select the room you want this macro to appear in. A macro can operate modules in more than one room, but it will appear in the Room View for only one room. Our Breakfast macro will be in the kitchen. Now we can start adding modules.

Drag a Selected Module Into the Macro Designer
To add a command to a macro, drag the module you want to use from the available modules on the right hand side of the screen.

You can view modules from any or all of the rooms by using the drop down menu to select them. By dragging the Coffee Pot module to the macro, we'll make turning it on the first event to happen.

Add Delays
When you use macros, not everything has to happen at the same time. You can use delays to spread out the events of your macro.

To make the next event happen 10 minutes after the coffee pot turns on, we'll drag a delay into the macro, and change its time.

Set Dim and Bright Levels
Different kinds of modules use different types of commands in macros. If you add an appliance module, SocketRocket, or other module that can't be dimmed, then you only have the option of turning it On or Off.

If you add lamp module or other dimmable module to your macro, you have two different options. If you use "Set to" ActiveHome Pro will turn your module on to full brightness, then dim it to the selected level. If you use "Adjust by" ActiveHome Pro will just tell your module to dim or brighten, which only works if the module is already on.

Here we'll set the Small Light to turn on to 70 percent.

Entire Room Controls
In addition to individual modules, you can use room modules and House Code modules in your macros to make it easy to turn on or off more than one module.

In our example, we can use the Kitchen module to turn off everything at once.

Look How Quickly You Made a Macro! (Wasn't That Easy!)
Now we have a working macro! Your macro is automatically saved. The Macro Timeline shows you all of the commands in your Macro, and tells you how long it will take to complete.

If you're done with your Macro, you can go back to the room view, or make a new macro. In addition to following the visual timeline, you can read the text box at the bottom of the Editor window to see what's happening in your macros.