Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 13—Displays
2 The Home Control Assistant
Types of Displays
In HCA there are two types of displays: Displays you create and a display automatically created
for a folder’s contents.
Each time you create a folder HCA automatically creates a display for it. What you can do with
the display is the same as you can with a display you create. You can add a background to it and
position icons on it as best fits you needs.
So why create you own displays in addition to the folder displays that HCA creates? The answer is
simple, to create a better grouping of icons from more than one folder. For example, each folder in
your design could contain all those device, programs, and groups for one room. You could then
create displays that show all the icons on a floor and another that shows all the icons in the whole
home.
As described in the chapter introduction, there are three different types of Displays in HCA and
each has a different use. It is important to understand the utility and limitations of each type before
you decide which kind you want.
Display type Major features
Icon Display Shows one or more icons for devices,
programs, and groups. You can, but
don’t have to use a background for the
display. Backgrounds are DXF files or
bitmap images. The displays that HCA
creates for a folder is always an Icon
display.
Graph display Shows a power track graph
Text display Show text messages created by the
Visual Programmer Show Message
element. No icons can be placed on this
display.
HTML display Shows a rendering of an HTML file.
This file can be, but doesn’t have to be,
produced by HCA reading a template
file, substituting data for placeholders,
and displaying the resultant file. This
kind of display is always created using
the New Device Wizard.
A design can contain as many displays as you need.
Text Displays
Text displays are the simplest kind of display in HCA. The only property for a text display is the
display name.
The text for a text display comes from many different places.
 Power Failure outage and restore messages (Restart chapter)
 Show Message elements (Programs chapter)