Express Control’s built-in schedule allows you to program your lighting using a familiar graphical calendar with full recurrence options for holidays, opening hours, days of the week and more. In Express 1.1, we introduced the ability to pause your schedule, allowing you to temporarily ignore scheduled programming to make way for an impromptu special event or unexpected change in proceedings.
On this page
Configure Schedule
Before using the new pausing schedule option, we first need to add events to our project’s schedule.
Click ‘Configure Schedule…’ in the Control tab of the Tools menu to add scenes and tags to the project’s schedule.
If you’re new to scheduling in Express, take a look at our introduction video.
Pause schedule
When scheduled changes are turned on, Express will faithfully follow your schedule 24/7, reliably maintaining your lighting state according to the provided events.
Short-notice lighting requirements may vary from what was programmed in the schedule, but on-the-fly adjustments to scenes, colours and intensity can easily be made. Whether it’s an intensity override made from an Express Touch wall station, a colour adjustment from the Express Touch mobile app or a different scene selected using Pharos Cloud, Express gracefully departs from its schedule in response to live adjustments.
When a live adjustment has been made, this will maintain as the new output until the next scheduled event is reached, which may be time, date, or astronomical clock based, at which point Express resumes the programmed schedule. For example, in a restaurant with scheduled ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ looks, a scene adjustment made while the restaurant is open will persist until the restaurant is scheduled to close, at which point the live adjustment is discarded and scheduled programming resumes control. However, if you don’t want the schedule to take over again, pause schedule lets you suppress the built-in schedule for an indefinite period of time, preventing Express from running scheduled changes until a user manually reactivates the schedule.
The schedule can be paused from a touch device, using interactions, from the controller’s web interface, from Pharos Cloud and from the controller’s HTTP API.
Pause schedule from a touch device
Scheduled changes can be turned off using touch devices including the Express Touch mobile app.
- Navigate to the Schedule page on a touch device
- Tap the toggle switch at the top of the page
- Tap to turn scheduled changes on / off
Note: The schedule page must be enabled in touch device configuration for it to appear on touch devices.
Toggle scheduled changes using interactions
Express interactions can be used to toggle scheduled changes on and off. This allows you to turn the schedule on and off in response to a variety of inputs including the controller’s push button or even a key switch connected to the controller’s inputs.
- Go to ‘Control’ > ‘Configure Schedule…’
- Select ‘Add’ to create a new interaction
- Choose an input for the interaction, such as Push Button or Digital Input, and configure the input options
- Click ‘Select an output…’ and select ‘Suppress Schedule’
- Click ‘Create interaction’
💡 Tip: Suppress schedule is also available as a input to interactions, allowing you to change your project’s lighting state when the schedule is turned on or off.
Pause schedule from the controller’s web interface
Scheduled changes can be turned on or off from the controller’s web interface.
- Navigate to the controller’s web interface by clicking ‘View web interface’ within the controller’s properties, or by typing the controller’s IP address into a web browser from a device on the same LAN
- Open the ‘Control Panel’ tab using the navigation at the top of the page (this will be password protected, if set)
- Click ‘Schedule On’ or ‘Schedule Off’
Pause schedule from Pharos Cloud
Scheduled changes can be enabled or disabled remotely using Pharos Cloud.
- Select your controller and navigate to the ‘Tags’ tab
- Use the switch next to ‘Schedule’ to enable or disable scheduled changes
Pause schedule from the HTTP API
Express Control’s HTTP API features endpoints that can be used to enable or disable scheduled changes, and to check whether the schedule is enabled or disabled.
PUT /api/schedule
Supply a JSON object with a single enable attribute, true if the schedule is to be enabled, false if it is to be disabled.
GET /api/schedule
Returns a JSON object with a single attribute, enable, which is true if the schedule is enabled, false if it is disabled.
