RE: xAP HS plugin errors

["Paul Gale" <groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Kevin, that's very informative as usual :)

You should give the HV plugin a go - I've found it really useful so far.
Ev=
erything in my HA land is starting to come fully together for the first
tim=
e - exciting and powerful :)

Paul.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xap_automation@xxxxxxx
> [mailto:xap_automation@xxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Kevin Hawkins
> Sent: 01 July 2006 13:06
> To: xap_automation@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [xap_automation] xAP HS plugin errors
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> I'll have to leave the error messages to James but on the large number
> of xAP messages I can help.
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> When you have a HS device (one that wasn't created from a xAP
> origination) then you can choose whether this device should also
appear
> 'reflected' out on the xAP network - this way all the inbuilt/plugin
> devices within HS can actually become xAP devices - which is very nice
> :-)      You can choose from the configuration pages on an individual
> device basis whether this should happen. I am guessing that all your
> HomeVision devices are also enabled as xAP.   HS has two xAP schema -
> the 'HomeSeer' one and the BSC one which also means that if you use
both
> then you will get two messages per event.
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> Now BSC and the HomeSeer schema both send a message on change so if
the
> HomeVision plugin is repeatedly updating a device value (even though
it
> hasn't changed) then you will get xAP messages each time it does this.
> That sounds like it would be the wrong thing for a plugin to do but
> maybe there are other reasons they chose that approach, or maybe they
> didn't anticipate this side effect,  there is another plugin that does
> this too - is it DooMotion or something... What I would suggest is
that
> you disable xAP on all HS native devices that you aren't needing to be
> accessible from the xAP network.  Of course you may want to leave
> several devices xAP enabled this way as then you can use xAP Desktop
or
> xAP Floorplan (AJAX based realtime web interface) in place of
HomeSeers'
> inbuilt refresh based web pages to get nicer front end displays.
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> On the network traffic issue... a xAP message is a single UDP packet -
> which means it has no protocol overhead in the IP layer (unlike TCP
> where every packet is sequenced and acknowledged and there exists an
> error/retry mechanism). This make xAP highly efficient but sacrifices
> guaranteed delivery (just in case you were wondering it is possible to
> bridge xAP using TCP rather than UDP for traversing the internet for
> example with guaranteed delivery, and such an application is available
> on the mi4 site). An Ethernet network can send a huge amount of
traffic
> per second - 10Mbs, 100Mbs or 1Gbs even  - a xAP packet is typically
> only 150 bytes or so but at maximum occupies one Ethernet packet of
1500
> bytes , say approx 15K bits with headers.   Based on the typical
100Mbs
> Ethernet network...(and with a  lot of bad approximations along the
> way)   100M/15K =3D 6.7K packets per second Which means a 100Mbs
Ethernet
> network could support traffic of over 6500 xAP messages per second....
> quite a lot !
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>  What does cause a hit though is the processing to generate these
> messages and perhaps even more so the processing to receive them as
they
> have to be parsed - so on PC's running xAP applications you can get
> performance spikes if you suddenly get huge numbers of xAP messages
> coincidentally.  You might see this in HomeSeers CPU usage if all
> devices change coincidentally and all are xAP enabled.  If you are
> bridging a xAP network to a low speed network eg RS232/485 then there
> are issues too.   In these circumstance with such hight traffic you
> would generally pre filter messages, or even better not have such a
high
> volume in the first place.  High xAP traffic is almost never needed -
> after all it is typically only generated on device state changes and
how
> many devices change state many times per second - and if they do is it
> important to notify every change ?   In the BSC schema for LEVEL based
> devices and with the Netiom for example when you have analogue to
> digital converters they generate constantly changing values usually on
> each sample (hundreds of times per second)  - but there is a user
> configurable hysteresis setting such that they only report when
> significant level changes occur. This can eliminate the small jitter
> these devices create and reduce reporting to just useful changes for
HA
> purposes.
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>    Cheers Kevin
>=20
> PS I haven't used the HV plugin for HS but I might give it a try over
> the w/e ..
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> Paul Gale wrote:
> >
> > I=92m getting errors such as these occasionally =96 few times a
day:
> >
> > 01/07/2006 09:26:05  - xAP Conduit - HSEvent Error 64,[38,On,,,,
Type
> > mismatch
> >
> > 01/07/2006 09:26:05  - xAP Conduit - HSEvent Error 4,38,[,17,,,
Type
> > mismatch
> >
> > I have the HomeVision and a Comfort plugin working in the latest
> > version of HomeSeer as well.
> >
> > Any idea what might be causing these?
> >
> > I=92m also seeing a very large number of xAP messages =96
generated by =
the
> > xAp plugin from the HomeVision plugin  - it seems to refresh all
the
> > HV variables several times a minute, even if they=92ve not been
updated=
.
> > Is this by design? Would a large number of xAP messages cause any
> > problems or performance hits?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Paul.
> >
> >
> >
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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