Difference between revisions of "Rooms"

Latest revision as of 05:59, 9 October 2012

Rooms Page

List all the rooms in your house here. A room does not have to be a physical room, but is really more of a general area. Whenever you add devices, you will pick the "room" they are in. So you can add rooms for the garage, a back porch, maybe the pool area, or some part of the yard if those areas will have devices.

If a room has any type of media device, such as a media director, TV, stereo, or audio player, the room is considered to be an entertainment area. To make everything easier for the user, when you start one media in the room, LinuxMCE will automatically stop any other media that is playing. For example, if you start watching a video in your VCR and then insert a DVD into your media director, LinuxMCE will automatically stop the VCR since this is almost always the desired behavior and saves you one extra step. It also means you only have to press one "OFF" button and any media you were playing shuts off.

Multiple Entertainment Areas in One Room

In some situations, a user may want multiple media sources in the same room. For example, in the master bedroom perhaps there is a 'his' and 'hers' TV, and each wants to watch something different. Or, in the main theater there may be 1 big, primary screen, and several smaller screens. In these situations you will need to check the 'Manually Configure' box to setup multiple entertainment areas in the same room. You will add an entertainment area for each unique media stream you will want, such as the 'his TV' and 'her TV' in the bedroom, or the 'main TV', 'TV #1', 'TV #2', etc in the theater example. Try to logically group your devices into the entertainment areas. If you are configuring the entertainment areas manually, you will need to go to the 'Advanced/Devices' page for each device and put it into one or more entertainment areas.

Take the example with a master bedroom that has a 'his' and 'hers' TV. You will check the 'Manually Configure' box for the Master Bedroom, and then create 2 entertainment areas in that room: 'his' and 'hers'. His TV will go in the 'his' entertainment area, and her TV will go in the 'hers'. There are 2 separate VCRs, one for each tv. So each VCR will also go in the respective entertainment area. Let's say there is a common DVD player that both devices share. Perhaps you use a Y splitter or maybe the DVD player has multple outputs. There will be just 1 DVD player device, but it will be in both the 'his' and 'hers' entertainment areas, as specified on the 'Advanced/Devices' page. This allows LinuxMCE to handle all the media logically and intuitively and makes the user experience much simpler. If the husband is watching a videotape on his TV and then hits the button on his remote to watch a DVD, LinuxMCE will know to stop his VCR without touching the wife's. The husband and wife control their individual VCRs separately. If the wife then touches the 'watch a DVD' button, LinuxMCE figures out that both the husband and wife share the same DVD player, and will automatically setup the wife's TV so that she can watch the same movie that her husband is already watching, and both will control the DVD player.

When a room has multiple entertainment areas, then when you choose "Rooms" on the orbiter, you will see those entertainment areas. In the case of the master bedroom "his" and "hers" example, touching "Rooms" would include a "Master Bedroom - his" and "Master Bedroom - hers". All scenarios except media are arranged by room. So whether you choose "Master Bedroom - his" or "Master Bedroom - hers", you will still have the same lighting, climate, security and phone options. However, the orbiter will control only the "his" or "hers" entertainment area.

Modifying the Behavior

Please note that if you choose to 'manually configure EA' from the web admin, you will be responsible for creating all scenarios in that room. The system will no longer create them automatically for any devices added to this EA.