I'm having this problem with the wife mode on the home panel. When pressing "make dinner" she won't respond? I've used Prontoedit to add a macro that controls her arms, legs and brain. Maybe there is something wrong with the macro? Here it is.

Wife - stand up
Wife - move legs towards the kitchen
Wife - activat brain in food mode
Wife - move arms to cook
Wife - lay the table
Wife - serve dinner
Wife - Beep two times when ready

Ofcourse I could use the default "Wife mode" but it's only tested on blondes and she's a brunette.
Please help me.

Maybe you should trade it in for a new one.
The wife that is!!!

It's the "lay the table" command that is messing things up. Try "set the table". And you might add the simple "please" at the end of each command. Lastly, macros like yours only work half the time, at best. Try preparing dinner yourself every other time.

Works for me.

Dave ;-)

I believe that you would need RF capabilities for this.

Or you might want to try attaching a small device to your wife, the pronto could send a signal to this device, which in turn will administer a small electric shock.

You need a discrete Code at the beginning:
Wife - On
;-))

Without discrete codes things could be a problem... such as what if the wife's on the phone? That could conflict with "move arms to cook". And you would CERTAINLY lose out on any fancy shutdown macros.

Re: Adding the discrete code:

Wife - On

Turning the wife "on" may lead to something better than dinner. :-)

My own experiences in this vein have met with remarkable failure so far. Even equipped with the most sophisticated if/then/else/and/or routines my efforts have met the devasting brick wall of the jersey girl's smile...

The "wife" mode only becomes functional if there is a corresponding "husband" mode for mowing grass, taking out trash, washing cars, etc.

ROFL!!! Gives a whole new meaning to pushing all the right buttons.
Lisa

I think the adding "Please" in FRONT of all your commands will do the trick, not at the end. Then each line becomes a two command macro by themselves, example: "Please Wife - cook", etc. I believe this will work beautifully! ;-)

Thanks everyone!

I've discovered that she doesn't respond that well to the "Wife" command. So I tried "Darling" and as you suggested added a "Please" both before and after. This worked much better but the actual dinner wasn't that tasty. Something was missing and after much programming with Prontoedit and double-checking with the emulator I came up with a sleek solution.

First I activate the TV panel on the Pronto and browse to one of the sports channels. With any sport on and a rather high volume the first response is that wife enters kitchen. Be sure to add a delay before the next step. Now using the X-10 devices installed at home controlled by the pronto via an ir534 I set the kitchen light to 100% bright. This gets her attention. Another x-10 device starts the kitchen fan and now the frying pans and wife work together in perfect harmony. Apparently the fan noise starts wife with both brain and body in an urgent cooking mode and she'll use whatever tools available.
Now depending on what kind a food you have at home the next step in the macro is another delay. I used a short beep to indicate that the food must be ready after the delay. This gives me time to take my hand out of the pants.
Now I reduce the lamp in the kitchen to 30% and almost like magic the table gets set with plates and everything. Also the kitchen radio is controlled via an ir-extensionwire. One of the romantic stations will do and set the volume to a nice level via a discrete code.
At first I would like another beep here but the response from the kitchen came automatically - "Dinners is ready".

So this is how it should look in Prontoedit:

TV on
delay 5.0 sec
ESPN
TV Volume +
TV Volume +
TV Volume +
TV Volume +
TV Volume +
TV Volume +
x-10 light kitchen 100% bright
delay 30.0 sec
x-10 kitchen fan on
Delay 20 min
Beep 1500hz 100% 2000ms
x-10 light kitchen dim 70%
Kitchen radio on
delay 2.0 sec
Kitchen radio volume -50
delay 2.0 sec
Preset 5(soft music)
TV off
TV kitchen on
delay 10.0 sec
TV kitchen mute

As it turned out the "wife" mode on the home panel wasn't functioning properly. I think Philips have some work ahead to really make this a useful feature of the Pronto.

I was wondering, Do you live In Stepford?

If I pulled this with my wife she would execute her command of "Remove Balls" which is discrete and device specific

Can the "remove balls" command be anything other than discrete? If it was a toggle command Mr Bobbit would not have become well known and the UK hospital waiting list would also reduce.

Just a thought

Marc B-C

Actually I believe you would be better off with dog mode. Dog mode is much more cooperative and offers less resistance when required to move. Granted it doesn't have as many features as wife mode but with all of the difficulty people are having with wife mode when compared to the reliability of dog mode I'll take the latter. I belive the problems with wife mode are related to basic design limitations in the device and cannot be fixed by appending or prepending any subroutines.