Home Control Assistant Newsletter for May 3
Have you looked over the version 16 release notes? Lots of changes that you can incorporate into your designs right away.
And if you are looking for answers to the most common questions about HCA check out our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Version 16
In case you missed it, HCA version 16 was released in October 2019. There are two big reasons to upgrade to this new version. First there are a lot of new features and a lot of stability improvements that make things go better and faster even if you make no changes in your design. Take a look at the release notes and you can see all the changes. Let me highlight two reasons to upgrade.
First, over the years we have had a lot of requests for ZWave and Zigbee device support. These wireless devices have their pluses and minuses and some people really like them. If this is what you are looking for, then you should look into Samsung SmartThings and Hubitat Elevation. Both offer hubs that provide the interface that HCA needs to talk to these kinds of devices.
The second big reason to upgrade is that you have a lot of time invested in HCA and by upgrading, at a nominal cost, you support the company that keeps this software going year after year. Recently the HCA Cloud got caught up in a bit of a squall when our hosting company came under attack. While it was nothing to do with HCA, our team was there over the weekend and sorted it out within a day. Upgrade now to keep this level of support going.
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V17 Open beta now available - beta 9 now available
The HCA 17 open beta rolls on with a new beta with new features now available. Want in? All you need do is to enter your HCA registration code into the online form as usual, and the resulting page contains a link to the beta page for download. The beta zip file password is the same as your V16 password. Please read fully and carefully the build notes. One suggestion: If you are using SmartThings or Hubitat you really should get on board with the beta as there is new stuff heading your way that needs this beta version.
Some miscellaneous tips & tricks
Just some small items this week.
Bi-Color single-color icons?
I use the new icon annotation a lot – the ability to write text over an icon – as it is a good way to display short information and it is supported on mobile platforms. This is why HCA ships with those “blank” icons supplied in various colors and shapes. One thing that bothered me is that the icon also shows the state of the device and the “blank” icons only have one representation. That means on mobile platforms they show as ON by the color of the label below the icon. On an HCA display they show with a colored box around it. To me that’s not the best presentation.
Since I’m using the IconChange function in a compute element to change the text on the icon, I thought why not change the color of the icon as well. In the program that changes the annotation text, I switch from the gray color icon to the yellow color icon if the device is ON. Easy to do and makes for a more obvious display.
Annotation multiple lines
While we are on the subject of icon annotation, I also wanted to display multiple lines of text over the icon. Took me a minute to remember how to do that so I wanted to pass it on. You embed a newline character in the string. Use the chr(10) function to make that character. The expression to use in the IconChangeEx function looks like this: “line1” + _chr(10) + “line2”.
Checking for errors
All of the functions used in a Compute element generate a result. Sometime that result supplies information like if a device is on (the IsOn function) or off (the IsOff function). Other functions generate a value that tells you if it worked or not. For example, the FileOpen function generates a result that is either a number if it worked – which is then used in the FileWrite and FileRead functions - or a “no” value if it didn’t. How do you check the result to see if it is a number or a yes/no value? This is why the IsBool function exists.
The IsBool function determines if the value you are looking at is, without any conversion, a yes/no value. There are also other functions that are similar: IsNum, IsDate, and IsString. In most cases you don’t need these functions because HCA expressions convert values into the needed type for the operation. Here is an example: Assume that the variable nameed “level” contains the value 90. If you use this in an expression: “The answer is:” + level, it creates a string of “The answer is 90”. HCA converted the number to a string as that is what was needed. But sometimes you don’t want that automatic conversion because you only want to see if something is of a certain type. That is what those “Is” functions are for.
New icons in the library
Everyone loves new icons and there is a new set in the library for you to download. The name of the package is “Sensor icons” and it contains a nice icon for a water leak sensor and one for a presence sensor. It has sizes for all themes. You can download them from the library today just look for the "Sensor Icons" package.
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Want to watch instead of read?
If you are interested in watching some videos about how HCA and Insteon can work together, George De Luca, a HCA users of a few years and technology video creator, has started to add HCA videos to his channel. He has a good knowledge of HCA and its ins-and-outs.
His channel can be reached at: https://www.youtube.com/deluca2008. While I’ve offered him some thoughts on the videos, his opinions and advice on using HCA are his own. If you have questions about something you see, ask them in the video comment section and you may see a video with an answer.
User-to-User forum
An HCA User who wanted to set up a forum for user-to-user communication. I'm passing this on, but please know that this is not a HCA company project and I will not be spending much time there so I don't know how this will work out. Here is a link to what he set up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeControlAssistant/
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Want to take the next step in automation? Want to get started with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant and control HCA by voice commands? Even if you are a long-time user of HCA, the Getting Started guides have all the info you need on client-server, mobile applications, DDNS, and voice assistants.
All of the Getting Started Guides are available on the support website.
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