X10 and xAP

[Hiller]

Hey guys,

Sorry not to get back to you all sooner. I have been very busy with the holidays and haven't checked the board that often. I was holding off on development because Steven was looking into things but I have a feeling that it isn't going anywhere. Because of that feeling I am going to continue to work on the plugin.

Last I remember I has a status indicator working within XLobby so that it would tell you if a device was on or off. I will have to check it.

Hiller

[drodegeb]

I have the homeseer xap plugin installed, and xlobby and the xlobby xap plugin. I can see the message from homeseer updating the devices in xap, but can't seem to get xap to update homeseer. I can see the message going out from xlobby in the xap viewer but homeseer never seems to get it and update the device.

Any ideas??

Dave

[CouchPotatoe]

I need to know a little bit more about what you have set up here. I am assuming you have 3 applications and two plugins running on the same machine ? The 3 applications being XLobby, Homeseer and xAP Viewer and the two plugins the xAP plugins for XLobby and HomeSeer respectively. In this scenario xAP Viewer would have to be the first application launched as you need a xAP hub to be running to allow xAP applications on the same machine to hear each other.

What does it say in the xAP Viewer title bar - does it indicate it's running as a hub ?

I am assuming the xAp plugin is a recent version - later than say 0.8.125 ?

Also has the xAP 'wizard' ever triggered in HomeSeer allowing you to add a xAP device to HomeSeer and if so what did you set up ?

If you go to xAP conduit>Configure are there xAP devices listed in "select devices to re-detect" ??

Kevin

[drodegeb]

Well I got the updates working into homeseer and can control devices. I shutdown homeseer, xap hub, xap viewer, and xlobby. Then restarted xap hub, homeseer, xlobby, and viewer. It works now. It appears then hub wasn't acting properly, I could see all items properly from homeseer in the viewer and from other xap applications homeseer just wasn't seeing all of them.

Another problem I found now, there probably is a better way to do it. I am atttempting to use xLobby on a different machine then homeseer and can't get it working. I used the viewer and noticed that the message is trying to send it to homeseer on the same machine as xlobby not the other device. I might be missing something in the xlobby configuration. Is it possible to run Xllobby from a different computer than homeseer? I noticed that there are "server" configuration options in xlobby, how does that work?

Dave

[CouchPotatoe]

xAP is totally network flexible - it doesn't matter whether a device or application is local or remote as the xAP messages are always seen by all your machines on the network all the time. However xAP does have an ability to 'target' messages meaning that although the messages still go to everyone there is an extra bit of information saying 'this is meant for you'. Also the source address of a xAP device is often formed by using the local 'machine name' eg hiller.xlobby.machine where machine is the name of the machine it is running on.

Obviously in XLobby you set some buttons up that send xAP messages - as long as the target matches what you are trying to control then it will all work. However I have just looked again and the early version of the plugin seems to be hardcoded (and therefore limited) to targeting the same machine as XLobby is running on. There are no configuration fields for the target address, so I'm afraid you will have to wait for an update to the plugin to make this possible.

XLobby could control devices in two ways. Firstly it could just send 'button events' eg "Button ON" "Button OFF" etc - these would be untargeted messages and a device eg a lamp could watch for a specific one of these and change state accordingly - or alternatively a button can specifically target a device saying 'change state device XX' - the latter is how Hiller has implemented it so far.

Kevin

[Hiller]

CouchPotatoe is correct. When I started the plugin I hardcoded the target and that will be changed. When I was creating the plugin I didn't even think about the fact that people might run the apps on different machines. It was an oversight on my part.

It's been a long time since I have looked at the code but I might have a look tonight and see where it is. I'll try to finalize the on/off interface so that XLobby can display the state of a device and I'll also look into fixing this targeting problem.

Steve

[Heiko]

great news

[CouchPotatoe]

Hi Hiller,

Glad you're back on the case with this. One thing I alluded to above is that there are two ways of approaching this.

1) The button on XL specifically targets a device and commands it to change state

2) The XL button is effectively a BSC 'input' device and simply sends info/event messages when it is clicked. Something else watches these and scripts further action(s) to change the end device. BSC mapper , a xAP application does specifically this mapping BSC inputs to outputs - it is available from http://www.ascentium.co.uk/xap . Homeseer could also do it if required. The approach taken is one of style / role , is XLobby a controller or a 'keypad / display' if you like.

Kevin

[ingalls]

Hi Hiller,

I'm glad too to see you back!!!

I would like to know were I can find some help file to know what I have to install and how I do the parameters on xlobby, the plugin xap, and the other software?

[drodegeb]

Thanks CouchPotatoe and Hiller


Hiller,

Would it be possible to have the xap plugin support a more general command, so the person developing the skin can basically send out any xap message they want to, maybe even to the point that the skinner could paste the xap command directly into the button or generate it inside xlobby. (I don't know the xap protocol very well so I might be crazy, or someone might have a better ideas on how to do it.)

Dave

[Hiller]

Hopefully there will be another plugin version out this weekend. Yesterday, while I was sitting at home with the plumbers that were destroying my house I took a look at the code.

-I fixed a bug that you guys hadn't seen yet
-Got the device state information to display properly.

Todo for the weekend:
-make the device state information show as an image (so skinners can make things pretty

-add a HS machine name to the configuration so that it can be run on a separate machine. I found out that you can't completely wildcard the homeseer target in xAP or I wouldn't do this at all.

Hopefully that will get the ball rolling again for you guys.

Steve

[Heiko]

can't wait

[justonemore]

I THINK I have this all setup correctly. But unfortunately I'm not seeing (basicly) the bathroom light going on. That's the device I was using.

.xAP conduit plugin installed on HS
.all xlobby dll's where they should be
.Testing on SAME box (for now)
.believe I ran test properly in xlobby under eventmanager tab

I'm quite sure it's something I am forgetting to do. So bear with me

[Hiller]

Hey guys,

Sorry for the release delay...This weekend was much more busy than I expected so I didn't have time to finish up what I wanted to do. I won't put a date on when I will get it out but expect something soon. It won't be jaw dropping but hopefully it will give you a few more functions.

Steve

[Aaron]

Cool... we appreciate the work.

Take your time, I'd rather see a good implimentation that takes longer then a so-so one that comes out quickly.