Settings By Alert Type

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.

For each of the types of security problems (security, fire, etc.) you can specify some parameters. 'Delay before alarm' means how many seconds you will have from the time the sensor is tripped to enter your PIN code on an Orbiter before the alarm sounds. Normally for security alerts you would want to allow about 30 seconds so that you can enter the house and shut the alarm off. You may also want a brief delay on 'fire' events since you will likely add event handlers to tell before Pluto to call the fire deparment in such cases.

Normally you will not have a delay on 'Movement', 'Announcement' and 'Air Quality' alerts since these do not normally trigger alarms. If a sensor triggers an announcement, for example, you probably want Pluto to make the announcement right away, rather than waiting for a delay.

Note that what type of security problem a sensor triggers, as in what event gets fired when the sensor is tripped, are specified on Wizard/Security/Reaction to sensors.

Exit delay means that no events of that type will be fired for that many seconds after you change house modes by entering your PIN on an Orbiter. You will likely give yourself an exit delay of 30 seconds or so for security events. If you specify no delay, then the instant you arm a sensor it becomes 'live' and you will have no time to leave the house.

Alarm duration indicates how long after firing the intial event before Pluto fires a corresponding 'reset' event. Let's say that you have added an event handler that turns on all the lights, tv's and stereos in the event of a security breach. You likely will not want them to stay on indefinately until you return. So after however many seconds you specify here, Pluto will fire a 'Reset security breach' event. In the event handler wizard you would then specify that in response to the security event you want Pluto to turn on all the devices, and in response to the reset security event you want Pluto to turn them off again. You really have total flexibility to tell Pluto to do anything in response to the events. For example, if there is a security alert you may want Pluto to turn on the lights and tv's, but after so many seconds when it resets the security alert, you want it to turn off the tv's and all lights except the front porch light.