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Developers / Re: LinuxMCE's z-wave driver for a stand-alone system

« on: July 11, 2009, 12:36:51 am »

Hari's Z-Wave device is a DCE device, and thus should be used within the construct of DCE.
...or, you could just reinvent the wheel like any other programmer...but in my view that would be retarded.

A quick look at the code shows that ZWave.cpp seems to implement the "DCE" interface needed by LinuxMCE, while ZWApi.cpp implements the Z-Wave primitives and actual interface to the USB device (via a serial library).

So it seems quite probable that these two pieces could be split, and thus avoiding reinvention, as well as the need to provide a lot of support infrastructure that may not be needed by simpler projects.

I ran across discussion on the MisterHouse list about how some of the developers aren't happy with the MH driver architecture and they mentioned the idea of using xPL/xAP as the API:

http://www.xplproject.org.uk/
http://www.xapautomation.org/

which appears to be a community developed protocol designed to layer over proprietary automation protocols, such that you might have say a gateway box (or daemon) that talks Z-Wave, and another gateway box that talks INSTEON, with both connected to Ethernet and speaking xPL/xAP to the main controller.

The LinuxMCE driver could then be split into two components: a DCE wrapper around an xPL/xAP client, and a Z-Wave driver that implements the xPL/xAP network interface.

Then HA software in any language can interact with your Z-Wave driver, and you can gain contributors to it from multiple projects. Plus LinuxMCE gains access to other xPL/xAP devices.

 -Tom