Creating scenes with graphics blocks is the middle ground between magic and Lua.  As with Magic scenes, Graphic blocks are created visually, however there is no limitation to the number of actions that can be performed once the scene is triggered.

An Example Graphics Blocks Scene

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We are going to use the door sensor and hallway motion sensor as the two triggers for our new scene.  Start by adding a new scene – choose the middle of the three scenes: Graphics Blocks.

We now see an almost blank screen but with a "+" at the start of it. This will be the beginning of our scene.  We now need to add the triggers that will cause our scene to run.

When clicking on the plus sign the system presents us with a list of options, almost anything can be used; for example time, dates, weather, devices etc.

In the image above, the front door has been selected as a trigger.  Clicking this inserts a block into the graphics blocks scene.  Each block that is added in this way represents a trigger that will cause the scene to run, or an action that the scene needs to perform.  At the moment we are just adding triggers.

When we first add our block it will trigger if the door is "Armed".  However, for this scene we want it to trigger if the door is "breached" – this is what we call it when the door is opened.  We use the green box to change "Armed" to "Breached".

Our scene will now run when the door is opened.  However, we don't just want our scene to trigger if the door opens, but we want to check the state of the motion sensor too.

There are now two plus signs on the screen.  One immediately following the first trigger we just added, and one at the very end of the scene.  Clicking the first plus sign will allow us to add one of two commands to our trigger: "And" or "Or".

Because in this case we want our lights to be off until there both is motion detected and the door is opened, we will add the command "And".  If we wanted the lights to turn on if either there was motion or the door was opened, we would choose "Or".

Once we have our "And" command in place we click the plus again and select the motion sensor that is in the hallway.  We will need to change the green box to "Breached" again here.

Now that we have finished selecting all our triggers we need to tell Graphics Blocks that the trigger section is finished and we are now going to specify the actions to be performed.

We do this by changing the "And" at the bottom of the blocks to "Then".  The scene will then read: When the door is opened and motion is detected then do something.

We will set the RGB lights around the TV to slowly change colours (program 4), close the blinds and dim the lights.

Because we want all the lights to dim, instead of selecting each one individually we can select "More Devices" and it will bring up a pop up with tick box function where we can select all our lights at once.

When we add the lights, the green box that appears has "Turn On" selected, but with the drop down box we can select the option for "Set Value".  This allows us to set the specific brightness of the lights to a percentage.  We will set them to 50%.

And that is that!  All finished.

Lets run through our scene from top to bottom:

• When the door opens
• And
• The motion sensor detects movement (because we walked in)

Then:

• The lights around the TV will start running the 4th program (aurora)
• And
• The roller blinds in the kitchen will close
• And
• All the selected lights will change their state to be 50%.

To finish off, we click on the General tab at the top, name our scene and and put it in a room.

Then the most important part:  We click the blue save button on the right!

 

So, give it a go!  Give your house some brilliant automation!

To take this a step further, why not read our brief introduction to Lua.