Insite Cascading PIN Numbers

The new Insite touch screen offers a very useful and customized portal into CueServers lighting control system. In some cases, you might need to control such unfettered access to some aspects of your system.

It's for this reason that security is so important in many situations when dealing with lighting. The new Insite touchscreen with CueServer 3.0 delivers.

In this article, we'll cover how to use PIN numbers with Insite and CueServer 3.0.

The Scenario

You have an event hall with several Insite stations around the building. You don't want to allow access to the building lighting to anyone who happens to be walking by, you want to make sure only those with permission have access. You also need to compartmentalize the controls so that people only have access to those areas they need access to.

The Breakdown

To do this, we'll use the cascading PIN numbers feature of Insite and CueServer 3.0.

This provides access to pages via a unique 4-digit PIN number and denies it to those without it. After we have our stations up and running, its a matter of checking the "Require PIN" box and assigning a PIN number.

PIN numbers are page-specific, so we'll keep our basic controls on one page and our advanced controls on another page with a separate PIN. This will ensure that only those with permission to access the extended functionality will do so.

The Walkthrough

The first step once we have our stations set up is to add a PIN number by checking the "Require PIN" box and assigning a number. We do this on the Page Settings section of our station.

We have a splash/main page (page 1) and we don't want to lock that page, but we do want to lock access to the Lobby, Show Control and Wall Color pages. Lobby controls will be accessable by one group of personel while Show Control and Wall Color controls will be accessable by another.

We need to add the PIN for lobby controls (1234) first. The lobby controls page has two section (page 2 & 3), so we'll add our PIN to both pages.

We also need to add our second PIN (5678) to our other pages (pages 4 & 5).

Main insite screen
Set PIN number 1 Set PIN number 2

Once we've assigned our PIN, we will add some additional security rules to the pages inside of Page Settings.

We need to capture two events and create rules for them. The two events we'll be capturing are:

  • Idle: to reset authentication after 15 seconds
  • Cancel Authentication: for when the user cancels PIN input

We'll need to repeat these rules on each of our locked pages, changing the page number accordingly.

Idle Timer

Whenever user input has stopped, the page is considered "Idle". This rule is triggered when the Idle event has occured for the number of seconds defined in the rule. We'll be using 15 seconds.

When this event occurs, we'll want to do a few things:

  • Select station 1 (this station)
  • Switch to the main page
  • Lock the page that became "Idle"

To achieve this, we use the following:

station 1; @ page 1; page 2 lock;

set idle timer rule

Handle Cancel Authentication event

Whenever the cancel button is pressed on the Pinpad, the Cancel Authentication event is fired. If we don't capture this event and handle it, the only way out of a PIN entry screen would be to put in the correct PIN number.

We want to handle this event so that the user can go back to the main page. For instance, if a user taps a button by accident that requires a PIN, we don't want them to be stuck there.

For this rule, we're simply performing the script Station 1 @ page 1 to send the user back to the main page when they tap on cancel.

set idle timer rule

Now that we have our station pages locked, we will see upon accessing pages 2-6 that we are prompted for a PIN code.

Our PIN number (1234) will provide us access to this page as well as page 3.

This PIN is saved in the session for this station so if we type in the PIN for page 2, it unlocks page 3 as well, given the passcode is the same.

We will still be propted for our other passcode (5678) on pages 4, 5 and 6 given the code if different.

Any of our pages between 2 and 6 will be automatically locked again after 30 seconds has passed without any touch/action.

Enter PIN screen

If you would like to give it a try or follow along, you can grab the show file for this article here.

Have a Tip or Trick you would like to see? Let us know!

Hopefuly this has helped with understanding and using PIN numbers on CueServer 3.0, if not we are of cource always here to help, either by phone at 770-455-9019 or by email [email protected].

If you have any topics that you'd like to see covered, please let us know! We're always on the look out for new tips & tricks!