The Home Positioning™ System (HPS) enables handsfree automation via a network of sensors that quickly and accurately detect occupancy throughout your home. With handsfree automation, when you walk into a room, the room responds to your presence – the lights turn on, the curtains open, the music may turn on – all without lifting a finger or saying a word.
Many people have tried to use security sensors to automate their lights and other devices. These sensors may work OK for turning on the garage light or the closet light, but, generally, do not work very well in most rooms. They suffer from three problems. First, the lights may turn off while you are in the room. This suggests that you should increase the sensitivity of the sensors. Second, there may be a delay between entering the room and the sensor picking up your presence. This also suggests you should increase the sensitivity of the sensor. Third, the lights may turn on when no one is in the room – perhaps caused by an open window or the heat turning on. This suggests that you should decrease the sensitivity of the room. Unfortunately, it is pretty much impossible to avoid all three problems simultaneously except in areas of high activity.
Destiny Networks has solved this problem by using a network of sensors instead of just one individual sensor. The architecture of this network of sensors consists of Entry/Exit Sensors located at the door between two rooms, Area Sensors located in each of the rooms, and Getting Out of Bed (GOB) Sensors located by beds. Combined together and coordinated by the Home Positioning™ System running in the Ubiquity™ Handsfree Automation software application, we can eliminate all three problems and provide true handsfree automation.
The Entry/Exit sensor detects someone entering or leaving a room. It enables the room you are entering to “turn on” immediately as you walk in. It also enables the room to “turn off” relatively quickly after you leave. Typically, the Entry/Exit sensor consists of a passive infrared sensor that creates a curtain of detection such that the area of detection is limited to the doorway itself. The most reliable sensor of this type is the Acuity 47 Home Positioning System Entry/Exit Sensor. However, other sensors such as contact closure switches, beam sensors, and pressure sensors can all be used as Entry/Exit sensors.
Once you are in the room, you will be continually detected by the Area Sensor. When the room is occupied, these sensors must be sensitive enough to pick up even the smallest movements of people in the room. However, when the room is not occupied, these sensors must be sufficiently insensitive so that they are not confused by the heat turning on or an open window. The Ubiquity™ Handsfree Automation configurable software application works with the Acuity 57 Home Positioning System Area Sensor to do exactly that. In fact, the sensitivity of the sensor is continually adjusted depending on the occupancy of the room and the Room Scene the room is in. When the room is unoccupied, the sensitivity will be at its lowest setting. When the room is occupied, the sensitivity will vary by Room Scene - typically with the TV Scene having the highest sensitivity. In this way, the network of sensors will even sense someone relaxing on a couch watching TV.
When you put your feet on the floor next to your bed, the Getting Out of Bed (GOB) Sensor will immediately detect you and put the room into the Path Scene to provide you with low level lighting for your path around the obstacles in the room.
Infrared sensors such as the Acuity 47 Home Positioning System Entry/Exit Sensor and the Acuity 57 Home Positioning System Area Sensor sense heat moving across their field of view. Anytime motion is detected, we refer to that as a “hit”. However, sometimes we want the sensors to be more sensitive and sometimes we want them to be less sensitive. Our objective is to recognize an “HPS activation” which is a positive confirmation of someone being sensed by the Home Positioning™ System. To do this, we use very sensitive sensors that cause hits whenever they see motion, and then filter those hits as defined in the Sensor Sensitivity Menu, to provide “HPS activations” to the Domain Controller.
Rooms can be in one of 3 states: Occupied, Maybe Occupied, or Unoccupied.
If the Home Positioning™ System receives an , then it knows someone is in the room and the room is put into the .
If someone walks into or out of the room such that the Home Positioning™ System receives an , then the room is put into the . Note that in some cases it is impossible to tell whether someone was walking into or out of the room (for example if both rooms are already occupied). Similarly, it is impossible to immediately tell whether someone walked completely into a room or whether he started to walk into a room, changed his mind, and walked back out. Therefore, in all cases the Home Positioning™ System uses the Maybe Occupied state to indicate that one or more people may be in one room or the other, and then uses the Area Sensors to detect those people.
If the room was in the Maybe Occupied state and the Home Positioning™ System has not received an HPS activation from any sensor in that room for a period of time equal to the time, OR if the room was in the Occupied state and the Home Positioning™ System has not received an HPS activation from any sensor in that room for a period of time equal to the time, then it assumes everyone has left the room and the room is put into the .
If the room is in the Maybe Occupied state and the Home Positioning™ System does not receive an HPS activation from any sensor in that room for a period of time equal to the Maybe Occupied Timeout time, then it assumes everyone has left the room and it puts the room in the Unoccupied state.
Note that this is the normal way in which things should happen. That is, when the last person leaves the room, he activates the Entry/Exit Sensor which puts the room into the Maybe Occupied state and starts the Entry/Exit Timeout. During this time, the Area Sensor(s) in the room is still looking very hard for motion in the room. When the Home Positioning™ System does not receive an HPS activation from the Area Sensor(s) in the room within the Entry/Exit Timeout period, then the room is put in the Unoccupied state and the Room Scene is set to the Off Scene. Typically, the Entry/Exit Timeout is fairly short – enabling the room to turn off fairly quickly.
If the room is in the Occupied state and the Home Positioning™ System does not receive an HPS activation from any sensor in that room for a period of time equal to the Occupied Timeout time, then it assumes everyone has left the room and it puts the room in the Unoccupied state.
Note that this type of event should not occur because the Entry/Exit Sensor should have been activated as the last person exited the room thus putting the room in the Maybe Occupied state and activating the Maybe Occupied Timeout instead of the Occupied Timeout. However, in some circumstances the Entry/Exit sensor may miss the person exiting the room. In this situation, the Occupied Timeout keeps everything in sync. Note that the Occupied Timeout is typically a long time so that it is rarely used.
In the ideal situation, someone enters the room – triggering the Entry/Exit Sensor, turning on the room, putting the room in the Maybe Occupied state, and setting the timeout to the relatively short Entry/Exit Timeout time. At the same time, it increases the sensitivity of the Area Sensors in the room. Soon after entering the room, an Area Sensor detects the person in the room and sets the timeout to the relatively long Occupied Timeout time where it is highly unlikely that the room would timeout before the Area Sensor activates again. When the person leaves the room, he triggers the Entry/Exit Sensor, putting the room in the Maybe Occupied state, and setting the timeout to the relatively short Maybe Occupied Timeout time. Since there is no one else in the room, the Area Sensor in the room will not detect anyone and the room will time out and turn off soon. At that point, the Area Sensors are now put into their least sensitive state so that the heat turning on in the room will not create a false positive indication that someone is in the room.
In some cases, it may be possible to enter a room without being detected by the Entry/Exit Sensor. For example, if a contact sensor is the only type of sensor on the door and the door is already open, then the contact sensor will not detect someone entering through the door. Other examples include running quickly through a beam sensor, stepping over a spy sensor located under a cabinet, or climbing through a window. Note that the Acuity 47 Home Positioning System Entry/Exit Sensor mounted in the top of the door jam is the most reliable Entry/Exit Sensor.
If a person does enter the room without being detected by the Entry/Exit Sensor, we would like the Area Sensor to pick him up and turn on the room. Therefore, we set up the Area Sensor so that some number of hits (even when the room is unoccupied) will cause an HPS activation. Typically, this number of hits is much greater than the number of hits required for an HPS activation after the room is occupied. When the area sensor has an HPS activation in an unoccupied room, we call it a “” (i.e., it is like in “Star Trek” when Captain Kirk gets “beamed” into a room).
Just like with the Beam In, it may be possible to leave a room without being detected by the Entry/Exit Sensor causing a "". In this case we rely on the Occupied Timeout to indicate that the room is no longer occupied. If the Home Positioning™ System is not set up properly, then the beam out can also occur when someone is still in the room. If this happens, see the Troubleshooter.
When designed and installed properly, Area Sensors should only detect motion within the room in which they are located. They should not sense someone walking past the door of an adjacent room. However, sometimes it is not possible to eliminate an Area Sensor from “” into another room. If this happens, see the Troubleshooter.
When you walk out of a room, the Entry/Exit Sensor should be the last sensor to be activated so that the relatively short Maybe Occupied Timeout turns the room off quickly. However, it could be possible for the Area Sensor to be activated at the same time as, or just slightly after, the Entry/Exit Sensor. This might cause the timeout in the room to be changed back to the Occupied Timeout which would take a long time. To prevent this, the Home Positioning™ System adds a 5 second delay after an Entry/Exit sensor hit occurs before it will recognize an Area Sensor HPS activation. Therefore, if you are looking at the Floor Plan View of your home, you will see that a room will not turn white until at least 5 seconds after someone has entered the room.
There are three Room Modes that can be either enabled or disabled for all Room Scenes. The Room Modes are fully described in their set up menus. Please see Enable/Disable Automation, Sleeping Menu, and Privacy Menu.
Scene Continuation is a fundamental component of the Home Positioning™ System. It allows you to carry a Room Scene from one room to the next. For example, as you get out of bed, your bedroom will go to the Path Scene. As you walk into the bathroom, Scene Continuation will carry Path Scene into the bathroom as well. If you then change the Room Scene in the bathroom to the Normal Scene and walk into the closet, now Normal Scene will be the active Room Scene in the closet.
Once a room is occupied, additional people entering the room carrying a different Room Scene will not change the Room Scene in this room - the first one in wins.
Most of the time, as you walk from one room to the next, you will want Scene Continuation to carry the scene with you. However, there will also be times when you will want to change from one scene to another scene automatically all of the time. Scene Discontinuation gives you a way to do this.
For example, you may want to create a scene discontinuation in your hallway from TV Scene to Normal Scene so that you do not carry TV Scene throughout the house. Additional situations when you may want to use Scene Discontinuation include: to prevent rooms from going into Path Scene during the day and to convert your office from Path Scene to Normal Scene because you’re never going to want to work in Path Scene, etc.
To create a scene discontinuation go to the Scene Discontinuation Menu.