Action Keywords

An action is defined as a keyword that identifies the action type, always followed by one or more parameters and sometimes the equal (assignment) operator.

Every keyword uses a specific syntax that interprets parameters according to its own rules.

Cameras

CAMERA

The CAMERA action is used to temporarily disable cameras’ live view and recording features.

Action	Description
CAMERA name = ON	live view enabled
CAMERA name = OFF	live view and recording disabled
CAMERA name = RECON	recording enabled
CAMERA name = RECOFF	recording disabled

Parameters:

• name - the camera’s id. You can specify a list of space separated ids.

Examples:

• CAMERA entrance = ON

CAMERAREC

Records video from a camera.

Action	Description
CAMERAREC name = sec	records for the number of seconds defined with the set attribute

Parameters:

• name - the camera’s id. You can specify a list of space separated ids.

Examples:

CAMERAREC openspace = 30

CAMERARECFULL

Records video from a camera, like CAMERAREC, but ignores the DroppedFrames parameter in hsyco.ini, so that all frames captured from the camera during the recording period are recorded with no skips.

Action	Description
CAMERARECFULL name = sec	records for the number of seconds defined with the set attribute

Parameters:

• name - the camera’s id. You can specify a list of space separated ids.

Examples:

CAMERARECFULL openspace = 30

DMX

DMX

Controls the value of DMX-512 channels.

Action	Description
DMX address = ON	sets the DMX address to the value preceding the last OFF command
DMX address = OFF	sets the DMX address to value = 0
DMX address = FLIP	flips the status of a DMX channel (if the status is ON it executes the OFF command and vice versa). When more channels are specified, if the previous status of at least one of the channels is different from OFF, the OFF command will be sent to all the channels, otherwise the ON command will be sent
DMX address = value	assigns a value to the DMX channel. Valid values are numbers between 0 and 255
DMX addressX = DMX addressY	the DMX channel addressX assumes the current status of the DMX channel addressY
DMX address = MERGE	the channel or channels on the DMX OUT bus of the gateway follow the same channels of the DMX IN bus
DMX address = UNMERGE	disables merge mode

Parameters:

• address - when using one DMX gateway, address will be a standard DMX-512 address between 1 and 512. If there is more than one gateway, 1000 must be added to the DMX address for the second gateway, 2000 for the third one and so on. For example, 2100 stands for the address 100 on the DMX bus controlled by the third gateway. You can also use a from-to range format to specify a contiguous block of channels.

Examples:

DMX 100 101 102 = ON
DMX 100-120  200-220 = DMX 40
DMX 33 = MERGE

Infrared Control

IR

Sends a command to an IRTrans.

Action	Description
IR name = command	the IR code must be in the local IRTrans FLASH memory database or, If the hsyco/ir directory contains a .ccfhex file corresponding to the database name, then the CCF string in that file is used instead of sending the command stored in the IRTrans internal database

Parameters:

• name - identifies the IRTrans, as defined with the IRTrans parameter in hsyco.ini
• command - the command format is remote.command; that is the remote control database name followed by a dot and the command name.

Examples:

IR theater = dvd.play

I/O Servers

IO

Writes to I/O servers data points.

Action	Description
IO name = value	sets the data point to a value. Values are specific to the type of I/O server
IO name = FLIP	inverts the output of the I/O data point. If the status of the output is 0 the new status will be 1, if different from 0 the new status will be 0
IO name1 = IO name2	sets the I/O interface output name1 to the current value of the I/O interface name2

Parameters:

• name - the server id, followed by a single dot and the data point suffix. The EVENTS interpreter converts data points names to lower case
• value - you can use multiple unquoted words, quoted strings and variables, that will be appended to the value string.

Examples:

IO contacts.c1 contacts.c3= 1
IO sensors.c1 = FLIP
IO contacts.o1 contacts.o2 = IO sensors.flood

Log

FILELOG

Appends a generic text message at the end of a file.

Action	Description
LOG filename = text	you can use multiple unquoted words, quoted strings and variables, that will be appended at the last line of the text file

Parameters:

• filename - the file name. You can specify any path, starting from HSYCO’s base directory. If the file or parent directories don’t exist, they will be created automatically. The filename parameter can be a variable
• text - the message that will be appended at the last line of the text file.

Examples:

HSYCOSTART : FILELOG logs/mylog.txt = "log message example"

LOG

Generates an information message in the daily log file.

Action	Description
LOG = text	you can use multiple unquoted words, quoted strings and variables, that will be appended to the log message

Parameters:

• text - the log message
• from - the sender e-mail address.

Examples:

LOG = "log message example"
LOG = “Time: ” $TIME:H-M-S$ “ DATE: ” $DATE:D/M/Y$

Mail

MAIL

Sends an email message.

HSYCO SERVER sends the mail either directly to the recipient’s domain mail server if the SmtpName parameter is not defined in hsyco.ini, or using a specific email account with user authentication and traffic encryption if the SMTP server and account parameters are set.

If the email message is sent directly to the recipient’s domain mail server, you need to ensure that the mail server accepts mail to the destination address being sent with the from address and the public IP of the HSYCO SERVER.

 HSYCO does not automatically retry sending the message if the destination mail server is not available when the send mail function is called.

Action	Description
MAIL to = from subject body	sends text and camera images. The body part of the mail is the last attribute. You can email the same message to multiple recipients

Parameters:

• to - the recipient address. It is possible to send the same email to a space separated list of email addresses. You can optionally specify the destination SMTP server name or IP address by appending :server name or address to the recipient's email address, for example: john@example.com:192.168.1.1
• from - the sender e-mail address
• subject - a quoted string or variable with the message object
• body - the message body. To send an ordinary text, just enter a quoted text string. To send an image, append strings with the following format: “cam:cameraname[:seconds_back]”. For example, “cam:door” sends a live frame from the camera called “door”; “cam:door:2” sends a frame that was recorded two seconds before the last recorded frame; “cam:door:0” sends the last recorded frame. To send files as attachments, use the following format: “file:file name”. The file path is relative to the HSYCO root directory.

Examples:

In this example, we send a message every minute, with the measured power load, to two email addresses:

TIME : $BODY = "Energy consumption for " $DATE:y/m/d$ " at " $TIME:h:m:s$ " is " $power$ " Watt"
$BODY : MAIL email1@hsyco.com email2@hsyco.com = hsyco@hsyco.net “Sent from HSYCO” $BODY

40 seconds after the alarm event, an email from the address hsyco@hsyco.net is sent to emal1@hsyco.com, with three images attached: the first is a real time image, the second is the last recorded image, the third one is the frame that was recorded 15 seconds before:

user "security" = "alarm" : CAMERAREC entrance = 30, PROGRAMTIMER rec = 40
PROGRAMTIMER rec : MAIL email1@hsyco.com = hsyco@hsyco.net “Sent from HSYCO” “Camera entrance” “cam:entrance” “cam:entrance:0” “cam:entrance:15”

At midnight, we are sending the energy.csv file in the data sub-directory as an attachment:

TIME = 0000: MAIL email1@hsyco.com = hsyco@hsyco.net "Sent
from HSYCO” "Energy daily report." file:data/energy.csv

Public Announcement

AUDIO

The AUDIO action is used to play text-to-speech messages or recorded audio files.

Audio can be sent to the Web browser, the server’s audio line out connector, the internal speaker or audio out line of Axis cameras, and the speaker of SNOM phones or PA devices.

See the Public Announcement Appendix for additional information.

Action	Description
AUDIO to = FILE filename	plays a pre-recorded audio file
AUDIO to = VOICE:voicename message	converts a text message to speech and plays the audio

Parameters:

• to - the audio destination (see table below)
• filename - the pathname of the audio file, relative to the HSYCO’s main directory
• voicename - the voice name for the text-to-speech engine; see the Public Announcement Appendix for additional information
• message - the text message for text-to-speech conversion; you can use multiple strings that will be automatically appended.

Audio Destination	Description
speaker	the server’s audio line out connector
web	the Web browser’s audio output  this feature is supported only on Firefox and Chrome browsers
axis@camera id	audio sent to an Axis camera, using the camera id defined in the Cameras parameter in hsyco.ini
snom@ip:port	audio sent to SNOM phones and public announcement devices, to the multicast IP address and port specified (the IP address and port should be configured as multicast addresses on each phone)

Examples:

The gong.mp3 audio file is played every minute through the server’s audio line out or internal speaker:

TIME : audio speaker = file "audio/gong.mp3"

Same as above, but played at the same time on all phones registered to the 239.255.255.245 multicast address and port 5555:

TIME : audio snom@239.255.255.245:5555 = file "audio/gong.mp3"

Same as above, but played to the Axis camera with id “cam1”:

TIME : audio axis@cam1 = file "audio/gong.mp3"

Converts a text message to speech using the “en” voice of the text-to-speech engine, and play the audio on an Axis camera:

TIME : audio axis@cam1 = "voice:en" “the time is “ $time:h:m$

Serial Communication Ports

COMM

Sends a sequence of bytes to the specified communication port.

Action	Description
COMM name = hexbytes	sends bytes to a serial port

 If both verboseLog and userLog are set to true, the full trace of sent bytes is written to the log file.

Parameters:

• name - the name of the communications port, as defined in the CommPorts parameter in hsyco.ini
• hexbytes - string with the hexadecimal representation of the sequence of bytes to be sent. You can use multiple unquoted words, quoted strings and variables, that will be appended to generate the byte stream sent to the communication port.

Examples:

COMM serialport =  FE03C9104B27
COMM serialport =  FE $body 27

Squeezebox

MUSIC

Controls the Squeezebox players.

Action	Description
MUSIC address = ON	turns the player on
MUSIC address = OFF	turns the player off
MUSIC address = PLAY	starts playing music in the active playlist

Parameters:

• address - player number, starting from 0 for the first player, based on the listing order of the slimPlayers parameter in hsyco.ini.

Examples:

MUSIC 0 = ON
MUSIC 1 = PLAY