What's a "Point"?

A point is any specific piece of data or user-controllable setting that can be read from—and possibly written to (i.e. controlled)—a device.

While all points can be read, not all can be written to. What determines writability (i.e. whether a point can be written to) is whether a point logically could/should be controllable by users. For more information, see our explanation of read-only vs. read+write tiles.

What's most important to understand is that with Motion, points are used to create tiles.

Important Distinction: Points vs. Tiles

Your typical end users (including installers and engineers, post-installation) will never deal with points directly. Instead, they will interact with tiles, which encapsulate, enhance, and secure the functionalities of points. Hence points, in Motion Platform, are primarily a configuration-stage concept only, while day-to-day utilization of points actually happens by interacting with tiles.

Another way to think about points is that points are created by the manufacturer of the device, while tiles are the software magic Motion provides to wrap around those points.

Points can be many different things, such as:

• Temperatures

• Humidity levels

• Set points for temperatures and humidity

• Lighting controls

• Pressure gauges

• Leak sensor statuses

• Contact closures (e.g. is the garage door open or closed?)

• Relay-based switches

• Occupancy/motion sensors

• Air handler statuses

Motion supports reading from and writing to points from any supported protocol.

Motion also enables treating writable points as read-only points when configuring tiles.