Re: xAP, Telcanto and Homevision

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Gale wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I currently don’t use xAP although I have looked at it many times
> since it was first released. I’m getting closer to needing it on my HA
> server but have a few problems that need to be overcome first.
>
> Malcolm at Telgen (Telcanto) is writing a plugin for Telcanto to xAP
> enable it. I’d like to get now playing info out of Telcanto and also
> be able to control it.
>
What is your player with TelCanto ? If you use the SliMP3, Squeezebox or
Exstreamer than you can already have 'Now Playing' out of  the player
whilst being controlled via TelCanto.  WinAMP doesnt provide this
currently. Obviously native support in TelCanto would make every client
available.

> It looks like xAP may be the way to do this EXCEPT I’m running HV Pro
> and the desktop app on the HA Server PC. ACE also links into the HV
> Desktop app via DDE.
>
> A couple of questions:
>
> 1.      I presume the current HomeVision plugin is serial only and
> that DDE support still has to be written?
>
Nope - I believe it uses DDE

> 2.      How would ‘now playing’ info be sent to a controller such as
> HV and in what form? (variables, text etc?)
>
The current HomeVision conduit supports variables and so you would be
best suited tolink via a variable within HV and the appropriate info

> 3.      How would HV control an audio source such as Telcanto? (how
> does it work in the serial only plugin)?
>
Well that's a bit more awkward. Basically the HV is presented as an I/O
device via xAP - its inputs and outputs are device endpoints. HV is not
a xAP controller as such meaning that you can't construct, send or
recognise arbitary xAP schema (messages) from within a HV macro. So you
wouldn't be able to generate the transport control messages directly
from HV.Likewise the 'Now Playing' schema wouldnt be recognised by HV.
What you could do however is use a text variable as a control . Change
its state eg to 'Play' and a xAP (I/O change) message will be sent. Now
you would receive this xAP message in a script engine eg HomeSeer (which
I know you don't use) or xAP Desktop. xAP Desktop has a complete script
engine using a 'Visual Basic' type syntax.. What you would do here is
look for the 'Play' message and reformat it into the appropriate
transport control schema that TelCanto needs and you would effectively
have control of the Telcanto client from HV macros.  Likewise (in
reverse) you would watch  for the 'Now Playing' schema with the song
titles etc and translate that into a variable set message for HV. Within
a HV macro you would move that to the TV screen display

> I’d first of all like to write the now playing info to a HV video
> screen and be able to offer simple play/stop controls from it. Any
> other thoughts?
>

It can be done but this is a tad involved though (caused by HV not
having xAP macro commands in its language). This is quite a complex, but
interesting application to cut your teeth on :-) . You need a xAP script
application as a 'helper' so I suggest you use xAP Desktop. How familiar
are you with VB script ?

I should also mention that the HomeVision xAP conduit needs an update to
make it BSCv1.3 compliant and also to add some more I/O support.  This
BSC v1.3 support will make it far more elegant in operation and easier
to 'link' with say via variables which will appear as xAPBSC.event
messages of the 'text' type.   Then an application like BSC Mapper could
be used to link this to any other BSCv1.3 application - a bit like a
matrix switcher or 'telephone switchboard' if you like.  In the meantime
you can use the earlier  BSCv1.2 version of BSC mapper and of course the
BSC v1.2 schema used by HomeVision  to achieve the same result.  xAP
Desktop can be scripted to recognise either although the xAP plugin for
HomeSeer only recognises the latest v1.3

Kevin

> Thanks,
>
> Paul.
>
>