Motorola Homesight System Software

Setting up the Motorola homesight system is both easy and complex. The prior Product Installation Notes assume that you have successfully navigated the simple process of placing the devices and running the Device Discovery Wizard to attach each item to your homesight system. As this is accomplished for each item, macros are automatically added to the system for each component - meaning that your homesight system is almost automatically configured for use as a home monitoring system without any serious interaction. To get beyond the basics, however, you'll want to take a look at some of the things you can accomplish from the main Motorola homesight control screen.

To get an instant snapshot of the devices in your system (a logical place to go after installing multiple items) check out the Device Overview screen. This area gives you a list of al sensors, cameras and devices as well as their status and configuration options. It even shows battery status or whether the unit is on AC power. You can view either individual devices, or what's known as "Device Groups" which allow you to group devices and sensors by area or purpose. I segmented my system into "upstairs" and "downstairs" for convenience.

The Event Archive is the place you go if you want to check the logs, audio/video clips and still images captured by a triggered event in the homesight system. You can view the video immediately in the window (uses embedded Microsoft's Windows Media Player to handle the video playback) or simply take note of the logged data for various events such as motion detection or activity on a door/window sensor. This list can be filtered by device or date to help you narrow the focus of any activities you are trying to take a look at.

Adding a new device at any time is easy with the Device Discovery page. Just click the "Start Discovery" button at the top and the system will ask you whether you are connecting new Motorola equipment or looking to create a new Device Group. The Discovery process will run for approximately 15 minutes - the length of time you have to push the "Discover" button on any new devices you are connecting to the system before you have to reinitiate discovery again. You can also delete devices from this page and view the battery/power status as well as whether the unit is armed, disarmed, and/or what state the sensor is in (open/closed, dry/wet, etc).

Want a down and dirty look at what's been happening in your system without all the fancy graphics? The Event Logs page is the place to go. Be warned, however, for some unknown reason, Motorola didn't prove a way to filter these logs, email, save or print them out. They integrated a way to save a ZIP file of the logs, however the generated files are non-standard and are more for technical support than for personal use or archival. Obviously, for those using their system for any length of time, this page will be next to useless by virtue of its unmanageable length.

The event schedule is the real meat and potatoes of the homesight system. This is where you will add a way to trigger events (really macro commands) to react to sensors, including the sending of notifications and recording of video and audio events. For example, if you wanted your living room's Wireless Motion Sensor to initiate video recording of the living room Wireless Camera for a period of 10 seconds upon activity, you could simply do the following:

1. Click the "Add" button
2. Enter a name for the schedule
3. Under the Condition tab set the condition type (device-triggered or scheduled). In this case it would be a Device Event
4. Select the Device (in this case a motion detector in the living room)
5. Under Event select "Motion detected"
6. Specify if there are time of the week limitations (weekdays, a range of time, etc)
7. Under the Actions tab select the device to be initiated (the one you want to do something - in this case the corresponding Wireless camera) and select the desired "Action" (in this case "Capture Video")
8. Click the "Add" button to add it to the list. Notice that you can have a single event trigger multiple devices to spring into action.
9. Under the Notifications tab select whether you want to receive an email notification for the event or a cell phone notification. Click the "Add" button after making your choices. (Also, be sure to correctly set up your Email, Cell and SMTP information at the bottom).

As you can see there is a LOT of flexibility here. This is one place that Motorola spent a significant amount of time and energy and it shows. You can have one device trigger any number of other devices, send any number of notifications, and even pay attention to when these devices are active in performing monitoring activities. I set mine to automatically record at night - covering any instances whereby someone would break into the home while we are still sleeping in the house.