Scenes
Scenes are a core part of Nomad. A Scene defines the overall state of the van: what's powered on, what's running, what the dashboards show. Pick a Scene manually on the Scenes tab of the Intelligence dashboard, or let your instincts switch between them.
Drive and Park look after themselves. Set off and the van picks Drive; pull up and stop for a few minutes and it goes back to Parked. See Drive mode when moving for what counts as setting off, and how to change it.
Available scenes
- Parked. You're in or near the van. Water pump on, lights follow daylight.
- Drive. Travel mode. Most living-area devices powered down, and the map switches to its driving layout.
- Standby. Low-power variant of Parked for when you're nearby but not using the van.
- Sleep. Bedtime. Starlink, inverter, water pump and most devices off.
- Sentry. Security, for when the van is left unattended. CCTV on, and the vibration alarm is armed only in this scene.
- Movie. Lighting and entertainment devices set for a film.
- Work. Task lighting, laptop dock, monitor.
- Service. Garage visits. Drawers locked, water pump off, internal CCTV on.
Arranging, hiding and adding scenes
The scenes run along the top of the Scenes tab, and the same list appears as tiles on the Home and Cab screens and as pills on your phone. Whatever you change here changes everywhere.
- Reorder. Press and hold a scene until it lifts, drag it along the row, and let go.
- Hide. Pick a scene and untick Shown. It disappears from the tiles and pills but keeps everything you set up, so you can bring it back later. Drive and Parked always stay shown, because the van switches to them on its own.
- Rename. Pick a scene and type over its name, or choose a different icon next to it.
- Add your own. Tap Add at the end of the row, give the scene a name and an icon, and it appears as a new tab. Fill it the same way as any other scene, with Capture current state or by adding things one at a time. Your own scenes can be deleted from their tab. The eight built-in scenes can be hidden but not deleted.
Changing what a scene does
Every scene is yours to change. Open the Intelligence dashboard, choose the Scenes tab, and pick the scene you want along the top.
A scene is a list: the things in your van, and the state you want each of them in when the scene runs. Rename a line to whatever you call that thing, and use the bin icon to take something out of the scene altogether.
Add puts something new in. Start typing and it suggests what you can add, by name.
Two buttons save you building a scene from nothing:
- Defaults loads a recommended starting set for that scene, made from the devices you actually have.
- Capture current state takes what the van is doing right now and writes it into the scene. Set the van up the way you like it for a film, then capture it as Movie.
Save writes your changes. Nothing you have altered takes effect until you do.
At the top, Default scene on startup chooses what the van does when it powers up: a particular scene, Previous to go back to whatever was last running, or None to start in no scene at all.
Saying what each thing should do
Each line gets the control that suits it, so there is nothing to type and nothing to guess at.
| What it is | What you set it with |
|---|---|
| Lights | On or Off, and for a light you switch on, its brightness and colour too |
| Sockets, fans, humidifiers, sirens, media players | On or Off |
| Blinds, roof vents, valves and other covers | Open or Closed |
| Locks | Locked or Unlocked |
| Heating, air conditioning, water heaters, and anything else with a list of modes | A dropdown of the modes that device offers |
| Anything set by a number, such as a brightness or a target temperature | A number box |
| Sensors and readings | Nothing. They are shown for context, not to be set |
A light stores how it looks, not just whether it is on. Set a light the way you want it for that scene and capture it, and its brightness and colour come back with it. A light the scene switches off stores nothing else, so recalling the scene turns it off rather than bringing it back at last night's level.
A light group is one line in a scene and sets every light in it, so a room's worth of lights takes one entry rather than six.
An LED controller offers its light and its animation, not its wiring. A scene sets the strip's colour and brightness, and an Effect row picks one of the controller's built-in animations, with None to hold a plain colour. The settings that describe how the strip is wired, the pixel count, the chip type and the bead sequence, are not offered, because they are set once under Settings, Devices and are not a thing a scene changes. Nor are the controller's music mode and its power-on behaviour.
A dropdown lists the modes the device itself reports, so you can only ever pick one it will accept. If a device is unavailable while you are editing, that line falls back to a plain text box until it is back.