An overview

At first sight, BMS Link may appear quite daunting, but i'll attempt to break the system down into a short overview.

Hopefully will give users a better understand of the major sections and how they can be used to create an automation project.

Whilst you're navigating BMS Link, you'll find lots of blue (?) icons. These provide more detailed help, relevant to the area you're in.

Virtual devices

To start with, the first thing you'll need are some 'Virtual devices'.

These are a software representation of a 'physical' device and belong to a 'Virtual Data source'

i.e. lets say you have a 'physical' dimmer module in the 'living room', so the 'Virtual device' might be 'living room light'.

Publisher

Once you have your 'Virtual device', its time to link it to your physical device.

We do this by creating a publisher and adding our 'Virtual device' to it.

The idea being, when your 'Virtual device' changes 'state' (i.e. operated), the publisher sends a 'device code' and 'value' to the selected interface.

The selected 'interface' receives the message from the publisher and sends the relevant RF message.

Automate

So now we have a means to control a physical device from software, we can now use the other features of BMS Link.

You may wish to manipulate a 'Virtual device' based on a 'time schedule'.

You might want another 'Virtual device' to be manipulated a set time after the previous 'Virtual device' is 'on'.

Maybe you want to 'turn on' a 'Virtual device' with more complex condition that require 'logic'.

Each condition you set is said to trigger an 'event'. In turn, from our 'event' we create an 'event handler'.

The 'event handler' decides what action is to be taken once the event has triggered.

Graphical views

This allows you to represent your devices and other data on a familiar layout view, customised as you see fit.

The system ships with a selection of graphics to get you started, which you can add to and of course, you can upload your own layouts.

Watch lists

This is another method to represent your device, but in a tabular list form