Events are one or more actions that are carried out in response to a specific stimuli, such as a device turning on or an email being received. Events are sometimes referred to as "macros" by other programs.
Each event is triggered in some manner (see About Triggers below). Each event can carry out one or more actions (see Event Actions below). Event triggers and actions are set in the Events screen.
A trigger is used to tell the event when to perform some action. Triggers are selected from the Event Trigger screen. Click here for the list of available triggers in HomeSeer. Events can also be triggered through the use of voice recognition, if it is enabled in the Event Properties. Click here to learn about formatting voice recognition phrases to use with event triggers.
Conditions give more flexibility in determining when an event should trigger. You can set as many conditions as you want on a trigger. The event will trigger only when all of the conditions are true. One or more conditions can be added to each event. Multiple conditions can be set up so that they're all required to be true (conditions separated by AND) or only one condition is required to be true (conditions separated by OR). Conditions can be added to events when the Apply conditions field is enabled in the Trigger screen for that event.
Conditions are also a type of trigger. When used as a trigger, the condition set is evaluated at least once a minute - more frequently if one of the conditions is a device condition and the device changes. If you use a condition set as a trigger and it contains a device that changes frequently, you can create additional work for HomeSeer by having to evaluate the entire condition set very frequently. Whenever possible, use a Trigger WITH conditions to determine when to run an event rather than conditions as a trigger.
For more information on using conditions, go to How Event Conditions Work.
There are several types of actions that can be carried out in an event and events can contain one or more actions. Actions are added to events from the Event Actions screen.
Click here for the list of available actions in HomeSeer.
Each event may be assigned to a specific group. The group is simply a name and has no other significance. This allows you to put all related events into the same group. For example, you may have a bunch of events that control all of the lights on the first floor. You could put them all in your downstairs lights group. There is no limit to the number of groups you can create.
Events are assigned to groups in the Event Properties screen.
You can view the events in a specific group by selecting the group name from the drop-down Groups box at the top of the Events screen. Selecting All Groups from the drop down list will display all of your events.