Premise How to get started with Premise?

[pipeman]

I've had Premise downloaded for awhile now, but don't know exactly where to start. In the Wiki article, there is the following;

Comprehensive Documentation
The detailed documentation includes many practical examples. In addition, there are video tutorials that demonstrate how to use Premise

I assume that is referring to a manual that can be downloaded, but I must be blind. Can't find it.

Thanks,

Sonny

 

[123]

All of Premise's documentation is in Premise Builder's Help function. It is standard Windows-style Help and offers a Table of Contents, Index, and keyword Search.

Printing from Help, to create a hard-copy manual, leaves a lot to be desired. I went through that exercise and ended up with over 300 pages of less-than beautifully formatted material (i.e. images were misplaced and/or clipped ... and there a lot of images). This did not include the driver documentation so a full, printed manual would be huge.

I looked around for a free utility to convert CHM (Compiled Help) to HTML or DOC but the results were less than satisfactory from a formatting standpoint. I wanted to create a single, formatted manual, as a PDF or DOC file, but I couldn't justify the time and effort needed to manually reformat the material. So I limited the scope of the task to the sections that were important to me and posted them in Premise Downloads:

Premise Builder Examples
Premise Scripting Reference
Premise Property Reference

The information contained in these documents is found under the "Premise Home Control Builder" section of the documentation tree (see the attached image).

I learned Premise by watching the original 'webinar' videos hosted by Damon, reading Builder's Help, and reviewing the posts in the old Support forum. Be sure to have a look at the 'How To' videos I've posted over on ScreenToaster, especially "How to build a Premise Home".

 

[samgreco]

If you tried to get to the Webinar videos linked above and got an offline message, sorry about that. It's back up now.

In the next weeks I'll be rebuilding the site, but I'll be careful not to leave these links down for long.

But as 123 mentions, those webinars are a great quick start for Premise.

 

[etc6849]

I too (not to long ago) learned how to use Premise by watching the videos and reading the forums. I highly recommend watching the videos as a starting point. In fact, I think it's safe to say that many of us on here have watched the videos multiple times. I've seen them all at least twice, but I had no home automation background. There is an alternate source for the videos found here.

Some hardware suggestions to start with: GC-100-12 (networked based IR controller), MR26a (X10 RF receiver) and zwave RZC0P controller (the driver is posted under various drivers. I started with a GC-100-12 and first learned how to build a custom device driver for my TV using the custom device wizard.

Premise is something that took me a lot of time to really understand, but I'm glad I took the time initially as it has proved to be a very powerful program.

 

[nov0798]

Ok so I watched some of the videos on premise, and I see that there are supposedly other videos available from that guy from Lantronix. I tried emailing him, but it was returned as undeliverable. Does anyone know where to get the additional video tutorials from?

Thanks

 

[123]

...Does anyone know where to get the additional video tutorials from?

There were seven 'webinar' videos created when Premise was owned by Lantronix:

1. System Topology and Controlling Devices
2. Introduction to SYS Technology
3. Introductory Programming
4. Intelligent IR Control
5. Home Theater Control
6. Distributed Audio with mSense
7. Two-Way Generic Serial Devices

There are seven 'How To' videos I created:

1. How to build a Premise Home
2. Custom Receiver Controls
3. Creating a Receiver Driver
4. MediaZone Master Controls
5. A simple MediaZone
6. 3COM Audrey driver
7. LogMaster: Add logging to additional Premise classes

I don't know of any other Premise video tutorials.

 

[nov0798]

In the webinar, the host continually references basic user interface tutorials, and advanced GUI tutorials.

 

[samgreco]

There were some videos that went MIA along the way. When Lantronix sold to Motorola or when Motorola killed it.

Damon may be able to shed some light on it when he pops his head in.

 

[123]

...basic user interface tutorials, and advanced GUI tutorials.
...There were some videos that went MIA along the way...

The search for the Grail has begun ...

What is your quest?
What is your favourite colour?
What is the number of classes and methods contained in the AutomationBrowser?

 

[samgreco]

Whew! I thought you were going to ask...

What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

 

[jimre]

Whew! I thought you were going to ask...

What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

African or European?

 

[xlurkr]

I don't know.

-Tom

 

[nov0798]

Although a definitive answer would of course require further measurements, published species-wide averages of wing length and body mass, initial Strouhal estimates based on those averages and cross-species comparisons, the Lund wind tunnel study of birds flying at a range of speeds, and revised Strouhal numbers based on that study all lead me to estimate that the average cruising airspeed velocity of an unladen European Swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour.

NOW, where are my videos?