Rooms

This page was written by Pluto and imported with their permission when LinuxMCE branched off in February, 2007. In general any information should apply to LinuxMCE. However, this page should be edited to reflect changes to LinuxMCE and remove old references to Pluto.

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, Pluto 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, Pluto 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.

However 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 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 VCR's, one for each tv. So each VCR will also go in the respective entertainment area. And 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 area, as specified on the 'Advanced/Devices' page. This allows Pluto 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, Pluto will know to stop his VCR without touching the wife's. The husband and wife control their individual VCR's separately. If the wife then touches the 'watch a DVD' button, Pluto figures out that both the husband and wife share the same DVD player, and will automatically setup the wife's tv so she can watch teh same movie 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.