Plugins Controlling Plugins

Hopefully, by now, you know that CUS plugins

offer a great no-code option for integrating

third-party devices into your design.

Pick from our growing library,

drop it into your design, connect, and you’re done.

Easy single-device control.

But you may not realize the power that

CUS brings to the table by bridging the

functionality between plugins.

Think about it:

basically, plugins talking to other plugins through CUS,

and maybe in ways that they were not even originally intended for,

but ultimately opening up the possibilities for creating

new intelligent automations for the users—all of this in a no-code,

drag-and-drop environment.

Each plugin has API access points called control pins,

whose input and output data can be connected to or from other things,

including CES things and other plugin ends.

Combine that capability with some simple control logic blocks,

and you can create some pretty cool automations.

Let’s look at an example.

In our conference room, we’re using the Space T occupancy sensor.

We’re controlling it using the Space T plugin that we got from Asset Manager.

It has an LED here in the current info tab that

turns on when someone enters the room.

So, let’s see how we could use that data to control other plugins as well.

We’ll use some simple control logic down here to convert

the true/false state of the LED to a couple of triggers

to signify if the room is occupied or vacant.

From here, we’ve wired it so that when a person enters the conference room,

we trigger a lights-on preset from our ETC lighting controller plugin,

and we trigger a lights-off preset when no one’s home.

See? Plugins talking to plugins.

We’ve also done similar exercises for the LG display and Romy Shades,

each time connecting them to occupancy data.

Now, let’s see it in action.

When we see our subject enter the room,

it lights up the occupancy sensor’s LED,

which in turn turns on our lights, boots the display,

and brings our shades down.

And we’re all set for the next meeting just by walking in

—achieved without a single line of code.

Thanks for watching.

We’ll see you next time.