RE: X10 Schema best-practice

[Johan Helsingius]

At 15:57 06/03/2004 +0000, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
<font face="tahoma" size="2"><b>&nbsp;
</font><blockquote type="cite" class="cite"
cite><font face="arial" size="2"
color="#0000FF">One
of the issues with say exposing X10 as a lighting or appliance control
system is that a xAP connector has no real way of knowing what devices
are out there in an X10 world (discovery) and even then not knowing their
capabilities or being able to determine state.
</font></blockquote>
Precisely. And you can't win. I've been struggling with this issue.
Where do you put that kind of information? In the box running the
X10 gateway? Or in the central control application? The xAP
way would be to put it out at the edge, but I'm not sure I want all
the configuration information spread out here and there. How many
boxes do I need to reconfigure if I change an X10 device?
How are people actually using xAP? Do they really take advantage of
the "distributed intelligence" or do they run "star",
with a central control
application talking xAP to devices but devices not talking to each
other?
<font face="tahoma" size="2"><b>&nbsp;
</font><blockquote type="cite" class="cite"
cite><font face="arial" size="2"
color="#0000FF">On
the status side I dont think there was any intention that this should be
mandatory and as the hardware mostly isnt capable its not really possible
either. There is potential taht a xAP connector for X10 could track the
stauts of a device by monitoring the X10 data seen on the network and
hence report a 'best guess' but this is problematic with missed data,
relative dims and of course manual intervention. Perhaps teh connector
could return a flag to say 'best guess' - which really reflects X10's
failings in my mind. Of course if a device did trul support hardware
status responses you could do it
correctly.</font><font face="tahoma"
size="2"></font></blockquote>
Well, perhaps the "best guess" should be a field of it's
own?
<font face="tahoma" size="2"><b>&nbsp;
</font><blockquote type="cite" class="cite"
cite><font face="arial" size="2"
color="#0000FF">The
possibility of xAP within an MSS100 is very interesting - perhaps the
ability within a schema to send and receive serial packets from the
serial port and to also toglle/read the handshaking lines. This would
allow simple serial devices to be 'xAPped' instantly - eg a HiFi
amplifier. </font></blockquote>
But that's where xAP causes some issues - as there isn't any
"generic"
schema. The MSS100 would have to be reconfigured to support
completely different schemas depending on if it was controlling
X10, an amp, a toaster or whatever.
<font face="tahoma" size="2"><b>&nbsp;
</font><blockquote type="cite" class="cite"
cite><font face="arial" size="2"
color="#0000FF">You
may be aware also Johan that I sourced a number of second user MSS100's
at a great price (£49) to offer to HA enthusiasts - I have even set up a
US source for them too and have sold a couple of hundred thsi way. My
intention at that time was to look at the embedded xAP possibility as it
is a natural fit. But as ever time and intentions often conflict.&nbsp;
</font><font face="tahoma"
size="2"></font></blockquote>
Interesting! So you still have a number of them available?
I still think I'm going to go for a linux box with a 8-port serial
card instead - not so many places where I really need to
have *remote* RS-232 capability.
<x>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</x>Julf