RE: Re: CBUS then?....

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxx>]

HomeVision, C-Bus & xAP



I have had quite a few conversations with Craig about the
possibility of supporting C-Bus within HomeVision. However the HV ROM is
really full and it couldn$B!G(Bt be done (in fact little can be done)
without
sacrificing other features in exchange.

I use HomeVision as my main hardware controller and as I now have C-Bus I
wanted to be able to incorporate this within HV so I looked to alternative
ways of achieving this. Obviously it is possible to send and receive your
own serial strings from the HV scripting language and you can also set and
take actions based on variables etc but it does not dovetail as
conveniently
with the HV operation as I would have like and the scripts become long and
messy. (Filled my HV doing this)

So as an alternative essentially what I looked to do was hijack the X10
state table within HomeVision and borrow some house codes that could be
allocated to C-Bus lighting devices. That way you could use all the
existing
script language within HomeVision to control C-Bus and to take actions
based
upon any C-Bus load change. A sort of mapping of C1 = C-Bus Lounge Lights
etc. I was even prepared to do away with X10 altogether and use the
features
for C-Bus. There was even a tantalising $B!F(Bdisable$B!G(B checkbox
already
available for certain actions in HV. But there$B!G(Bs a snag. The X10
state
table in HV is only maintained when an X10 controller is connected and
operational, disconnect the X10 interface and it gets ignored. Additionally
state change information for an X10 load is only reported (out the serial
port) when the new state does not match the existing known state. The
effect
of this is that for every C-Bus command that you want to send you have to
send a dummy X10 command as well. So if you want to send two C-Bus commands
in succession you have to endure the X10 time delay that is introduced. A
real pain. Incoming C-Bus load changes are fine though..

Craig is going to have a look at ways around this as a future firmware
patch but just at the moment he is snowed under with HV Pro but it is on
his
list. A couple of innocent $B!F(B how do I interface HV to C-Bus
questions ?$B!G(B
on the HV mail list would help convince him that more than a few people
would be interested in this. Both Frank and I have done our bit there
already.

xAP and HV are a different issue - again it is not going to be possible (or
actually desireable) to squeeze xAP in within the firmware - really as xAP
is so open & flexible and HV was based around  an ONOFFLEVEL decision
type
engine it would be restrictive to do it this way anyway. So the xAP
connector for HV will appear as an application connected to HV via the
serial port - really treating HV as an I/O device. There will not be xAP
commands as such incorporated into the scripting language of HV but you can
of course include the ability to send arbitrary strings out HV$B!G(Bs
serial
port to talk to the xAP connector (or indeed anything) to achieve quite
complex interactions.

Of course there$B!G(Bs also a new kid on the block that circumvents
both these issues - HomeBrain as a hardware controller is hoping to support
C-Bus directly, and intentions for xAP too - plus it has loads of memory
space and other I/O capabilites. It is unfortunate that HV as a controller
hasn$B!G(Bt grown to encompass the needs of the newer devices appearing
on the
market,  and seems intrinsically restricted from doing so - as far as I can
see the new HV Pro version does not look like it$B!G(Bs going to help in
this
area either. I really love my HV controller but maybe the market has moved
on too far now for me to hope that I$B!G(Bm going to remain with it -
C-Bus may
be that nudge that I need.



K





-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McCall [mailto:mark@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 26 May 2003 16:56
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Re: CBUS then?....



> > Is there a working HomeVision-xAP gateway yet Patrick?
> >
> It's imminent! Watch this space...

Cool. Can you give me some info on how it will work?  It would be nice if
"C-Bus" was just another option in the Devices menu in the HV software
(meybe someday).  I assume your software will need HV macros to send serial
commands?

Thanks

M.