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Heating/cooling room control
As next the functionality of a simple room controller for heating or cooling shall visualized. It shall consists of the following elements:
- Label that shows the current room temperature
- Label that shows the current setpoint
- + Button that is used to increase the setpoint
- - Button that is used to decrease the setpoint
First, insert two labels that the page of floor 1. Double-click the first one, select "Indicator" as function and select the corresponding KNX group address that provides the current room temperature. Do the same for the second label and link it to the KNX group address that provides the setpoint. The following figure shows the configuration of one of the label.
To make the display more user-friendly, the digits after the comma should be limited. In addition, the unit of the temperature shall be displayed. To achieve this, change to the appearance tab of the configurtion dialog of the label and use the following text format:
- 0.0 "°C": this format string always shows one digit after the comma and adds the unit degrees Celsius.
The following figure shows the configuration.
As next, insert two buttons for changing the setpoint. Use a "Button-Heating-Minus-Rect" and a "Button-Heating-Plus-Rect" from the library and place them next to the labels. Open the configuration dialog of the + Button and change to the "Object" tab. As operating mode select "+ Value", enter 0.2 in the text field "Step", activate the checkbox and enter "25" within the text field "Max. value". Within the Server Items list, select the KNX group address that provides the setpoint and activate the "Send" and "Receive" flag. Whenever the button is clicked, 0.2 is added to current setpoint and sent to KNX. This is done up to 25. Do the same of the - Button but use "- Value" as operating mode and "18" as minimum value. The following figure shows the configuration of the + Button.
Using popup windows
As you can see there are a lot of control elements within the visualization page "Floor 1". To make such a visualization page more easier to use, so called popup windows can be used. A popup windows is a group of elements that is shown only temporary.
To define a pop up windows for the blind control, select all three buttons of the blind control. Right-click on one of the three selected buttons and select "Group" within the "Grouping" menu. Within the dialog, enter a name for the group (e.g. "BlindGroup1") and select the checkbox "Popup window". Press "Ok" to close the dialog again.
Now the three buttons are defined as popup window. This means that the group is only shown in the visualization when they are activated by the user. Activating a popup windows can be done with a button or a link area. Within this tutorial, a link area shall be used. Insert a link area and place it over the window within the floor plan. Double-click the link area, move to the "Object" tab, select "Change popup visibility" as function, select the group name in the drop down box and "Switch On" as mode. Then, change to the "Appearance" tab, deactivate the check box "Border" and close the dialog.
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Instead of using a link area, a button can also be used to show a popup window. |
In order to test this functionality, start the visualization. After having started the visualization, the pop window is not shown. If you click on the link area, the popup window is shown and the controls can be used. When you click anywhere beside the elements the popup window is hidden again.
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In addition to automatically closing the popup window, a second link area or picture button can be used. For using this behavior "Auto close popup window" has to be set to "No" within the group configuration |
Testing the visualization in a web browser or on your smart phone
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