As people think of macros, they see them way too often as a necessary evil, or something of limited utility. Or worse, something too complicated to bother with.
My friends.... (conjuring up images of the Musicman scene) Macros are the best thing you will ever encounter in HA... and they are right here in River City!
Here is just an example... a translational macro. Let's use Macros to make our otherwise limited remotes do what we want them to do.
Here is our imaginary problem we will solve with using translational macros.
The light in the guest room can be placed on a randomly chosen address since it is not in use by a number of other controllers.
The hallway outside that bedroom has a light that is on address A3.
You have other controllers that control the hallway light, so A3 is kinda stuck "as is" since other things use it on that address.
You want to give your guests a slimfire 2 channel remote to turn on their room light AND be able to also turn on a hall light inthe middle of the night. But A2 and A4 are taken... and most X-10 remotes can only switch on ONE House Code and only in sequence (A2, A3 etc...) How do we turn on two completely separated codes in a two channel device?
Translational macros to the rescue.
Solution.
Put the guest room light on House Code G and address 1 (G1)
Set the slimfire to control house code G.
So your first button will work nicely on the room light, easy enough, G1 ON and G1 OFF....but what about the hallway light on A3? How do we make the 2nd button control THAT??? Here is how.
Create a macro that triggers from the X-10 signal "G2 ON".
Put the Hallway lights into that macro so that on a G2 ON signal, it produces an A3 ON result.
Voila...now the slimfire your guest has can turn ON both the light in THEIR room AND the hallway light.
Create a macro for G2 OFF that produces an A3 OFF command to complete the translational macro setup. Now the first button will control their room light directly, and the second button, thanks to this translational macro will control the hall light as well. Mission accomplished.
Possibilities? Limitless.
Try em.
