What does the Pathway Home Automation System actually do?

Basic Structure

Pathway manages a building within a hierarchical structure which is based around 'The Building' (as an individual entity), Rooms and Areas. 'The Building' is the master area which is basically defined by the Security System, and generally includes all the common rooms, foyers, and hall's. 

• Rooms can be anything from a garage to an Ensuite
• Areas are generally external areas such as the stairwells, pool area, spa area, driveway etc.

Pathway processes each room/area as a subset of the The Building and some rooms also have their own slave rooms such as a bedroom / Ensuite relationship.

Pathway uses Room Modes to provide a frame work through which predefined Output channel levels can be manipulated into room scenes.

Each room, generally follows The Buildings' lead as far as mode changes go but may operate independently if required.

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Room Devices

Each room or area has its own pre-defined devices – these may be lighting circuits, sensors, doorways, heating circuits, external lighting, fans, pumps, irrigation zones, and AV components, speakers, cameras.

Pathway also uses other data sources such as the Time, Date, Sunrise, Sunset, Month, Season, Day Light Saving, Lux levels, temperatures, and how you are using the room at this point in time. 

Devices are divided into inputs and Outputs, but some outputs also provide feedback data such as lighting systems.

Pathway Processing

Pathway collects data (both real time and periodically) and creates an ‘image’ of how each room/area is being used at any one time (Note: this is a digital ‘image’ made up of data and not a picture as such).

Without getting into too much detail, data is stored every minute (24hrs/7days) for a preset number of weeks (initially 6 weeks).   The data consists of usage data, temperature values, volume and source selections, expected Wake and Sleep times, plus a range of other information such as telephone extensions usage, Touch Screens.

Pathway sifts the stored data for useful information to help it predict how you use each room.   For example, it will ‘know’ that most Tuesday evenings, the occupier of bedroom 2 goes to bed at about 2130.  Tracking the Sleep and Wake times for each room, allows some interesting functions to happen automatically – such as turning on electric blankets if the room is deemed to be occupied, and the room temperature is cool enough or maybe starting under floor heating before you get up in the morning.  There are no fixed timers involved (unless you want the times fixed) each day’s Wake and Sleep time will change slightly from week to week depending on previous data.  Unfortunately, it can’t read minds but generally we find at home that it copes very well.  Once the room has gone into Sleep Mode (either automatically or manually), Pathway can also alter other rooms associated with the bedroom e.g. hall and Ensuite.   

Pathway will also have noticed that ‘the (whole) House’ is generally put into sleep mode around 2300 most nights, you have the option of either putting the house to sleep, or just going to bed and letting the system deal with putting the house to sleep.  Pathway will wait until there is no further movement before automatically changing the house into sleep mode.  Putting the house into sleep mode also causes other functions to be processed, such as shutting down external lighting that is not required, curtains lowing, winding down of floor and spa temperatures and what ever other requirements you may have.    

More on Processing

Pathway runs three different processes concurrently,

• The Event Processing        – Things that need to happen now, a sensor is triggered
• The Predictive Processing  – Predicting what is likely to happen next
• Refresh Processing            – It knows you are there, and keeps the room alive.

Pathway looks at what is happening now (the Event processing), what it expects to happen next (the predictive processing), and based on the fairly substantial stored data, refreshes the room to where it ‘thinks’ it should be.

Room Types

Almost every room in the house requires slightly different operational parameters because each room tends to have a different function.  These parameters are initially preset based on our previous experience, but can easily be altered to suit.  A kitchen operates slightly differently to the dining room which is different to the lounge or TV room.  Bathrooms are particularly complicated, and bedrooms have their own specific quirks.

 Interested, got an idea or question on automation? It costs nothing to give us a call! :o)