Difference between revisions of "Who Am I, Where Am I"

Revision as of 15:21, 15 March 2007

When you setup your LinuxMCE system using the LinuxMCE Admin website, you create scenarios, or activities, for all the rooms in your house. These are categorized under: Lighting, Media, Climate, Security, Telecommunications and Other. You may create a media scenario in the family room called �Watch TV� that turns on the TV. Or a lighting scenario in the bedroom called �Go to bed� that turns off the lights.

Any scenario in any room can control any device in the house. For example, in the master bedroom you may create a scenario �Kids sleep�, which turns off the lights in your children�s bedrooms. But you would put that scenario in the room �Master Bedroom� because you want to see that scenario on your Orbiter when you are in the master bedroom-not because that scenario is controlling the lights in your master bedroom. You may also want to see that scenario when you are in the living room, or perhaps you always want that scenario visible on the Orbiter no matter what room you are in. The process of creating the scenarios and choosing what rooms they should appear in is described in the ***LinuxMCE Admin*** section. This part of the manual explains how to use the Orbiter once your LinuxMCE system is setup.

Here we will explain how to tell the Orbiter what room you are in so that you can choose scenarios from that room.

The wireless standard orbiters (such as tablets, pda�s, or pc�s) use a technology called Wi-fi. With Wi-fi, the range is quite large-you can wander throughout the house and still use the Orbiter. However the Orbiter is not able to determine automatically what room you are in. You must tell it. On the main menu, in the lower right corner, are the �Who� and �Where� buttons. The �Where� button shows what room the Orbiter is controlling now. The scenarios you see on the menu are those that belong to that room. If the �Where� button does not show the room you want to control, just touch it and then choose the correct room. Of course you can pick any room in the house-not just the room you are in-to choose scenarios from that room.

The mobile orbiters (the mobile phones) use a different technology called Bluetooth. Your media directors normally have a Bluetooth dongle which is the transmitter. The range for Bluetooth is much shorter-about 30 feet or 10 meters from the transmitter. The mobile orbiters can, therefore, usually determine what room you are in because the media director in that room will detect a much stronger signal strength from your mobile phone than the other media directors. With the mobile orbiter, whenever you enter a room with a media director the mobile orbiter automatically switches to that room and shows you the scenarios for that room. Of course you can still manually override this and tell the mobile orbiter what room you want to control. You can control any room in the house-not just the room you are in.

On the mobile orbiter�s main menu, there �Where� button is in the lower right. If you want to control a room other than the one shown, touch the �Where� button from the main menu and choose the room you want to control. Note that if you manually choose a room, the mobile orbiter will stay locked on to that room even when you move around the house. This also means �follow-me� will not work since the mobile orbiter remains locked into 1 room. If you want to return to automatic mode so the mobile orbiter automatically switches to whatever room you enter and follow-me functions normally, just choose �Where� and then choose �Automatic�. When you are not in �Automatic� mode, you will see a * next to the room indicating that you are locked onto that room. When there is no *, that means you are in automatic mode.

The Orbiters also need to know who is using them. Not all family members may have permission to control all the rooms in the house. The parents, for example, may want to control everything, but they may not want the children to be able to control their bedroom. The Orbiter also needs to know who is using it so that it can show that person�s private media choices and to implement parental controls. Whenever you play music, watch a movie and so on, your choices will be a combination of all public media, and the private media of whoever is using the Orbiter. LinuxMCE also tracks favorite tv shows, alarms and other preferences by user.

You will always see the current user in the �Who� button, on both the standard orbiter and the mobile orbiter. If that is not you, just touch the button and choose yourself so the orbiter knows who is using it. Using the LinuxMCE Admin website you can indicate that you want your user to be �Pin Code Protected�. That means that if your user is selected, you will be required to enter your pin code to use the orbiter. If you do not protect your user with a pin code, then anyone who has the Orbiter can switch to your user and access your private media and other personal settings.