Knowledge base

Environment Control Workspace in The Grid 2

One of the common tasks for environment control is to change channel on a television. In recent years, most televisions (including satellite and cable TV) now have 3-digit channel numbers, such as “123”. TVs typically only allow a couple of seconds between each number, and many people who use alternative access such as switches cannot press the digits quickly enough. The Grid 2.9 allows you to “build” the number with individual digits and then send them in succession. You can also create a single cell that will send several digits without having to program a Wait command between each digit. This feature can also be used to send numbers to a telephone or to create “macros” for other devices – for example, you could have a single cell in The Grid 2 that will turn the on the TV and the surround sound audio system and dim the lights for you!

When you send several environment control transmissions from The Grid 2 in succession, the software now automatically ensures that these are spaced out so that each transmission is received before the next one is sent out.

Environment control workspace commands

The Environment Control workspace allows you to build chains of environment control actions for sending numbers to televisions and phones, and possibly other uses too.
These are the new commands used with the environment control workspace.

Add environment control action

This command adds an action to the workspace.

Send environment control actions

This command sends the actions that are in the workspace. There is a one second delay between each action.

Clear environment control actions

This command clears the actions that have previously been added to the workspace.

Remove environment control action

This command removes the last action that was previously added to the environment control workspace.

Contacts and environment control

The new environment control workspace has been designed to work with remote controlled telephones. You can call a contact from your contacts list and you can save numbers you have called.

Calling a contact

If you have the Environment Control workspace visible and you select a contact auto-content cell, the contact’s number will be entered into the Environment Control workspace.
When using the contacts workspace, you can use the new Copy contact to environment control workspace command to dial the contact’s number.

Saving a phone number

If you have dialled a phone number in the environment control workspace, you can create a new contact with this number using the New contact from environment control workspace command.

Alternatively, you could copy the number form the EC workspace with the Copy command, then edit an existing contact and paste the number into the workspace.