When designing a lighting system, and dealing with "scenes", how do you do the following?

Example:

I have a 6 button controller in a main area. 2 Buttons are being used for "room on", and "room off". (The "room on" and "room off" are just for THAT room, not any other rooms in the hosue. The remaining 4 buttons are being used for "scenes". These scenes are not all tied to JUST this room however. You may have a "reading" and "eat dinner" scene for just that room. But you may also have an "entertain" scene, "arrive home" scene, etc that may include that room IN ADDITTION TO other rooms. For the scenes that are not included in the "room on" and "room off" buttons for that room, what methods do you use to "cancel" those scenes? i.e., I had the "entertain" scene activated, but now I dont want it activated anymore. Do you create another scene for "entertain off", or use a "single tap-activate". "double tap-de-activate" type method?

The problem I see with using "double tap" or "tap/hold" for de-ativating the scenes is that it would be confusing when "double tap" is used elsewher ein the house for "snap to on", and "tap/hold" is used elsewhere in the house for "dim".

Am I making sense? I just want this to be as consistant and user friendly as possible, and am having a hard time accomplishing this.

Thanks

**EDIT**. I think Im going to try just using the button as a toggle. Im not sure if it will work when tied to a H/L system, but I'll find out shortly.

Depending on the client double taps will work, but in most cases it just creates confusion and client calls unless it is used globally, in the house, for something such as turning the light off.

The term scene can be used for many different functions. A scene can also be a pathway when entering a house (i.e. path #1 lights a path from the garage entrance through the kitchen to the MBR (located on the main floor), Path #2 lights a path from Path#1 to the the bedrooms mocated on the second floor).

Basically the way I see it, scences are activity based scenarios which require some knowledge of the clients activities and preferences (i.e. do you want to dim the perimeter lights, in the dining room, and lower the lighting level when entertaining).

Cheers

You can use a Variable in Crestron and Vantage to create a scene "counter" and from any button push where you are activating a scene, just adjust all those lights accordingly and reset the other scene variables. So the next push on those buttons has a begining starting point. Most of my scenes are three or 4 variations with a reset to the begining or OFF depending on the client.
You can also "Point" to a specfic scene on a button and group these pointers in a global scene, such as "PARTY" or "CLEAN".

When programming lighting keypads, you really need to determine the traffic flow in the house. Room ON and OFF buttons are a great start, no one wants to enter a room and fumble with a couple of buttons just to get some lights on. Home and Away are great for keypads at entrances, although I would suggest "away" should be a double tap to prevent the "oops I turned everything off". As for the other buttons, be cautious, too many different scenes can add confusion.
Entertain, no need to turn it off, just go to the home setting once you are done. Depending on which lighting system you are using, you could program in soem logic and have the home setting be different if switched from entertain. Lots of options and ways to deal with your question.

I have always avoided having a dedicated "room on" scene.
I prefer iunstead to place the most common scene for that room on the top button for that room.

The lowest button (except master raise/lower buttons) would be a room off button.

This essentially follows how I set up Grafik Eye wallstations back in the day (and as recently as last year). The GRX wallstations were the earliest lighting control keypads I used.

Entry points get more buttons, and I like to program a row of scenes for the specific space you are in, and the other row as whole house scenes with a "home" at the top, and "away" at the bottom.

This would be for Lutron SeeTouch or the Architectural style KPs, with either Radio Ra or HWI systems...

Spent all day on this system, and this is still an issue Im not sure how to resolve. You say go to a "home" setting. what are you referring to?

As for the other comments... heres a little clarification.....

Example: I may have an “entertain” scene, a “cooking” scene, and a “reading” scene all on the same 6 button controller. Customer is entertaining for the evening, and therefore the “entertain” scene is active, which includes SEVERAL loads all over the house. Now he's done entertaining, and want's to “read”. So, he presses the “reading” scene button. That sets the loads in the LOCAL room to the appropriate level for reading, but does does NOTHING to turn off the other loads that were previously effected by the “entertain” scene (and are no longer needed)

So, do I make a seperate "done entertaining" scene (dont like this option, nor think its the answer)?
Use the "double tap" method (will likely be confusing for client)?
Make the scene activator button a "toggle"?

Granted, I have yet to tackle having ALL of this controlled by the third party logic yet, but still. FWIW, the system Im using is a Pulseworx PCS, soon to be tied with a HomeLogic system. Maybe Im going about this the wrong way, but Im trying to get the details (scene off issues, etc) tweaked before I add the H/L to the mix. The PCS is a standalone system, that SHOULD (as far as I can see anyway) be able do what Im describing above even WITHOUT a 3rd party controller.

Thats pretty much what Ive done. INSTEAD of an "entire room on" button, I used the most common scene for the "on" button, and an "entire room off" scene for the off button.

Question for those that do it this way however. In your example Rick, you use the top button as a "room on" button, (most common scene).
Do you use that button solely and label it w the appropriate scene, or just label it "ON"

OR... do you have a regular button as ususal for the scene, labeled appropriately, and then just MIRROR the top (ON) button (labeled ON) In the end you have 2 buttons doing the same thing; 1 labeled ON, and 1 labeled "scene x"

If you're using Pluseworx, I assume you're probably programming the system with UPStart. For the loads you don't want on in the "reading" scene, couldn't you include the "reading scene" link in those loads receive components, and set their level to 0% ?

I thought about that option (adding off commands for the un-needed loads in the “reading” scene), but I see problems when doing that with the whole system. In the example I gave with just 2 scenes, it would be fine. But when doing a whole house with multiple scenes that involve multiple “global” lighting loads, I don’t see this working. The loads that need to be off for the referenced “reading” scene may not be the same as the loads that need to be off for a “dinner” scene, etc. Add to this multiple users in the same house (yet different areas) who would be using different scenes, (yet still effected by “global” scenes) and this problem multiplies.

Im probably making this more difficult than it is. Im just having a hard time figuring out how to handle the scenes that include some identical (global) loads, while making it as seamless as possible for the customer.

Room on, as stated above this should be the day to day setting for the room, so yes a scene of sorts. I typically add a double tap to turn lights to full for the house staff to clean by, or if full light is needed. We label this ON, or Room ON.

You are going to have to find out what happens after a party (entertain) is over, and determine how best to deal with putting the house back to a normal state. I mentioned Home only because that often is the standard lighting for the house. From there the client could go to a room to read or whatever.

Frank,
Use the "entertain" button as a toggle or super toggle. The type of tracking you are looking for would be hard to do with just upstart. I have done similar tracking using upstart in combination with HAI programming. But even then it is tricky.

Thanks. NOt sure if it will clash with the HomeLogic aspect of it, but Im going to try that tomorrow. I want to get some other "bugs" worked out before I throw another variable in there.

Perhaps use 6 button controllers next to 8 button contollers - the 6 for room control and the 8 for global control. I do that alot ala HAI's concept.

Well, after many more hours of trying different variables, reprogramming, trying again, reprogramming again, etc..... i have determined that toggles for any load that is involved in more than 1 "scene" is just too kludgy. Too many sync issues.

So while I was trying to avoid taking up (2) buttons on the KP's for certain scenes, I think it is un-avoidable.

Thanks all for the feedback.