Hi all,

I was playing around with the programming on my MX-900, and thought it would be neat to incorporate my shade control into my watch/off macros. So far, I have the shade set to close when I watch cable/dvd, and open when I turn the system off. I don't think this is possible, but can I set it to only open during the day time, and have it remain closed at night? I do not think that the MX-900 has any knowledge of the time, so can anyone think of a way this might be accomplished? I suppose I could add a macro button inside one of the menus that effectively acts as a 'off' macro, one for day, and one for night - would this be the only way to achieve this functionality?

No, there is no internal clock in the MX900.

Send IR commands to a PC or other type of programmable system that has a clock. Otherwise perhaps you could integrate some sort of light sensor that would stop it from opening when it's dark. Possibly with a trigger of some sort that would let you resend the command a couple of times to override the dark/closed state.

Is there a way you can put a timer on the power to the shade controller (does it plug into the wall rather than being hard-wired to power) so that it only operates during the day? Then your remote could always activate the shade controller -- it just wouldn't do anything at night since it had no power. You might be able to accomplish that with a combination of these: [Link: smarthome.com] [Link: smarthome.com]. Of course, if the shade were already open at night, then you wouldn't be able to close it because the controller would have no power so you'd have to manually turn on power to the shade controller with the 4035 unit in that case. But if you wanted to provide a "shade controller power" control in your remote, you could add one of these as well: [Link: smarthome.com] -- but you'd need to get the IR controls for it. I think I saw what you'd need for that in the "files" section here at remotecentral. This is a little convoluted, so I'm not sure if it would work, but it may give you some additional ideas.

mike

Thanks for the suggestions. The shade is hard-wired into some routed power source (my CI did everything - I was just playing around with the MX-900 myself), so I am not sure I can hook up any X10 devices.

If I wanted to do this with an MX-900, I would probably create a page that says,

OPEN
THE
SHADES?

YES
NO

I would jump to this page as the first step in the off macro and simply program the YES button to turn everything off and open the shades and the no button to turn everything off and leave the shades down.

It's a very simple solution that's fairly intuitive. Hope it helps.

-Sean

That's brilliant, thanks!

You're welcome.

I just had to jump in here and say that it is a simple and great idea that works, and suggestions like this is what this site is all about!

Good on 'ya, RM!!! :-) (And everyone else who constructively posts on this site! ... including MG above. Contributors throw out ideas, and they may not quite work in a certain situation, or they may work perfectly, or they may stimulate the person who actually owns the system with some new ideas to incorporate.)

Excellent! :-)