Controlling Lights with Events

The real power of a lighting control system is achieved through events. Events provide detailed control of your lighting system to ensure that lights are on and properly bright when they're needed, and off when they're not. Alarms give you detailed insight into how your system is running and if anything has gone wrong.

Events

An event is a lighting change that's triggered by a schedule or sensor.

An example of a scheduled event might be, "During the Monday through Friday work week, turn off all building lights at 7:00PM," or "Dim all parking lot lights to 40% power after midnight."

A sensor event is triggered by physical changes within your installation, such as someone entering or leaving a room. For example, "Set the hallway lights to 80% brightness when motion is detected," or "Turn off hallway lights when no motion has been detected for the past 15 minutes."

Events provide a great deal of flexibility to your lighting operations and can contribute to significant power savings. The schedule is defined through events and they can be configured for any time of the day on any day of the week.

Scheduled events are performed from the Schedule content area which is accessed by clicking the Schedule menu item in the navigation menu.

Adding a Scheduled Event

Events are scheduled times for lights or control zones to be switched on, off, or dimmed. Events are entered up to five years in advance, and up to one year of prior events can be viewed.

Note

Events over five years in the future can be entered, but the functionality has only been tested to the five year mark.

To add an Event:

  1. Click the Schedule button in the left menu bar. This will present a calendar showing currently scheduled events.

  2. Click the Add Event button to load the Add Event window.

  3. Enter a name for the event in the provided field.

  4. Use the Event Target toggle to select whether the event will affect a single control zone, or if it will apply a scene across multiple control zones, and then use the provided drop-down to select the zone or scene.

  5. Use the Event Type toggle to select whether the event will be a single event or if it will periodically reoccur. The remaining fields will change depending on which event type you select.

  6. Use the provided fields to enter the time you want the event to trigger. This is a specific time that is entered using the Event Start Time clock, or a less specific time such as dawn, noon, or dusk, entered using the Event Time drop-down. Note that if you're using a less specific time you'll be given the option to input a positive or negative offset in minutes. This will allow you to schedule events for times like "Five minutes before sunset" or "Eight minutes after noon." If you are scheduling an offset, events happening before the selected event time are entered as a negative number, while times after the selected event are entered as a positive number. For example, five minutes before sunrise would be entered as -5 while 10 minutes after sunrise would be entered as 10.

  7. If applicable, use the day of the week buttons to select the days on which this event will trigger.

  8. If applicable, use the Event Start Date field and the End Date toggle to enter the start and end dates forthe event.

  9. Click the Add Event button to create the event.

Editing an Event

You can edit any event in the Schedule view by clicking the event you wish to edit, selecting the Edit Series or Edit Occurrence buttons depending on the nature of the change, making the desired changes, and clicking the Update button to confirm the changes or Cancel to exit without making a change.

Deleting an Event

To delete a scheduled event, access the Schedule view using the Schedule button in the left menu panel, and click the scheduled event you wish to delete. If you wish to delete an entire series of events, click the Edit Series button, or if you just want to delete a single occurrence of a series of events, click the Edit Occurrence button. When the Edit Event window appears, click the Delete button in the upper right corner of the screen. You will then be prompted if you wish to Delete the event or Cancel the delete action.

Event Overrides

If you're adding or changing an event, and the new event occurs simultaneously with a previously scheduled event, the new event will appear greyed out in the calendar with an (Overridden) label next to the time of the event. This will persist until edits are made to get the two events out of conflict.