Messages

871

Developers / Do we have simple ON/OFF device for floorplan ?

« on: August 29, 2007, 09:58:38 am »

Hi,

I know for existence of light switch (on/off) but on floorplan it appears as dimmable switch (although it works properly - if you click on any value other than 0, then it goes to state 1).

Do we currently have any device, that would appear with simple on/off on floorplan ? (thermostat gives more controls:fan on, fan off, +, -,...).

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

872

Developers / Re: Proper support for non-one.zero state devices (blinds,dimmable lights,etc..)

« on: August 27, 2007, 09:22:49 pm »

One of the issues I noticed as well with the current Z-wave lighting system is that device state changes made outside of LMCE do not feed back to LMCE.  So if I turn a light off via LMCE and then press a button on a switch to turn it on, LMCE would still think it's off and show it as such on the floorplan.  I've seen other Z-wave software controllers use polling.  While there are some new devices that can support state change notification, polling is the simplest solution, I believe.  I plan to implement that functionality with the Insteon driver I'm writing.

Hi,

I worked around that problem. Since I wrote driver by myself for my home automation system (Cybrotech.uk), I could afford that. So I monitor automation level (poll 20 times per second) and if anything changes, then I send proper event to DCERouter so floorplan devices are properly updated...

The problem is that light is like switch device and not real device (see no good point for that other than being easier to implement), so it will go into desired state in few seconds regardless of true state of device. But if you send proper events it will also act accordingly...

I'd also vote for proper implementation of lights (where low level should report curren state back) instead of switches..

Any other opinions ?

I'm also curious how to contribute in current state of LMCE. Is there SVN? Are there any maintainers to work with and approve changes ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

873

Users / Re: Seriously..

« on: August 27, 2007, 11:21:09 am »

Boot over powerline? I'm impressed. When we tried it we gave up after 15 min.

I am writing this to you from a machine pxe booted over 85mbit powerline from my home lmce system :-)

Hi,

could you please post more info to wiki about such setup ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

874

Developers / Proper support for non-one.zero state devices (blinds,dimmable lights,etc..)

« on: August 27, 2007, 11:19:57 am »

Hi,

I'm integrating LMCe with my new demo house and I have all kinds of devices that are not lights and don't have on or off state - blinds, drapes for instance.

Currently one can do simple (but I think still dirty) workaround to add light device (by default are all light devices dimmable), then change its icon to blind and then use it. But the main problem in such setup is that user doesn't have any visual information about device's current state.

Particularly for blinds and drapes (and I think also for dimmable lights) it would be nice to add proper support and display current state on Floorplans if user desires so. For blinds or drapes, we could even have different icons (in 10% steps) so user can get visual feedback.

Anyone looking in this direction ? This enhancement is I guess linked to several changes in major plugins. I think it would be efficient to gather more opinions and do it in group effort manner ?

If we dig into plugins then I guess it would be also wise to consider another more major change - to introduce possibility to user, that with simple tick, device will show it's current state in text (whatever it is) on floorplans and also introduce event like "state changed" that would inform plugins that device's state has changed and needs to be updated on floorplans - if user desired such behaviour for this device. Any opinion on this idea ? It would ease addition of all kinds of custom devices to LMCE...

But since these changes are not so trivial, I'd love to hear opinion from LMCE maintainers as well.... Please take part in this discussion...

Thanks in advance for you opinions ,

regards,

Bulek.

875

Developers / Re: How to change house mode from external systems

« on: August 26, 2007, 10:38:00 pm »

I think you need to develop an interface between your home automation system and LMCE. The easiest way to do that IMHO create Generic Serial Device - GSD. Try to search 'Ruby' or 'GSD' in the wiki. Basically, all logic in that case processed by embedded Ruby interpreter. So, you should develop all login using Ruby and predefined functions and data structures.

When you do that you'll able to send commands from LMCE to your system and and vice versa.

Hi,

thanks for info. I know pretty much about that, but I'm still curious how to instantly query what is current house state (is it written somewhere in sql database, or can I send some DCE query and receive response, or...) and what DCE data,events and commands are related to security matters....

So basically I know how to receive or send events, but don't know what events to capture and what actions to send - and also how to see current security state. All this could be extended also to other features of LMCE...

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

876

Developers / Re: How to change house mode from external systems

« on: August 24, 2007, 02:17:56 pm »

Hi,

sorry for bumping this again, but it's crucial for my setup and hopefully also for some other users...

1. How can I query house status (armed,disarmed,etc...) via DCE ?
2. How can I put house in certain state via DCE ?
3. How can I get notifications on house status change as event via DCE ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

877

Users / Re: My audio has gone!

« on: August 22, 2007, 09:47:23 pm »

Hi,

maybe you can check Xine player logs and check what audio device it is trying to use. You can also try to play audio with Xine over command line....

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.

878

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Mail

« on: August 21, 2007, 09:50:01 pm »

Hi,

This one is not so hard to add. You just register device with DCERouter and specify what events to receive and the rest is up to you.

If anyone is willing to start, I can help with advices - already did something similar...



Regards,

Bulek.

879

Users / Re: non-"micro ATX" ASUS M2NPV-VM mobo - with more PCI slots for core

« on: August 20, 2007, 10:24:50 pm »

Hi,

I'm also looking for good mobo with many pci slots. Currently I'm running Asus mobo with Mobile Pentium Adapter, but would need some upgrade.

But, I have 5 pci slots, and would need one more to be sure to fill all the cards...

Let me explain :
- one 4xbt878 video surveillance
- extra NIC for local LAN
- Hauppauge PVR 500
- ISDN line interface card
- extra sound card that outputs to other audio zones
- one PVR350 that is lying around

Have also NVidia 6200 on AGP slot.

Anyone with idea what mobo to use for upgrade ?

Regards,

Bulek...

880

Users / Re: Orbiter over WAN

« on: August 18, 2007, 11:10:13 am »

I think port 3450 is the one...

Regards,

Bulek.

881

Users / Re: diskless media directors working as only mythtv frontends without being slav

« on: August 17, 2007, 06:17:25 pm »

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is of some use, but some time ag Pluto system had similar problem. Mythbackend is started by default also on MDs, but shouldn't be if there is no capture card in MD. But I'm not sure if this was fixed or not. If not, you can search and prevent mythbackend from starting on mds...

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.

882

Help Wanted / Re: Build Add on to lmce ?

« on: August 15, 2007, 11:47:51 am »

Hi,

I've created similar thing for other home automation system (http://www.cybrotech.co.uk/), but have done only proof of concept code in Perl. It actually works ok, so maybe we won't do any further C++ coding on that...
It detects and creates devices automatically, user just needs to put them into floorplans...

I could try to do similar thing for your system, but would need more information about protocol to your main gateway device so I can do integration. From this point on, you can decide whether to go further and code it into C++ which I'm not good at..

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.

883

Users / Re: Asterisk PBX

« on: August 15, 2007, 11:13:07 am »

Hi,

analog phone interfaces can sometimes be a big pain... I'd also vote for external spa interfaces - it doesn't take any place in server, you can use it also in other situations, etc...

Otherwise for setting up Asterisk under LMCE, try to use first LMCE web pages and then AMP pages that you can find under telephony group. And then experiment....

HTH,

regards,

Rob.

884

Developers / Re: How to change house mode from external systems

« on: July 30, 2007, 10:56:24 am »

Hi,


since release 1.1. is approaching, I hope you won't get mad if I bump this one. I'd like to hear developers opinions, so we can continue our integration work...

Just hope that some developer will catch this entry and respond...

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

885

Users / Re: Windows PC as a Media Director?

« on: July 28, 2007, 01:30:11 am »

thanks to both replies

im intrigued about using windows as an orbiter.

this means ill get the LinuxMCE interface on my computer without having to reboot or re-install my OS?

and retain the same functionality?

Well there are two general types of ORbiters. One is called "on screen" Orbiter and runs on Media Director. Another is just plain Orbiter that runs on Windows also. The main difference is that "on screen" Orbiter is capable of playing media and has embedded softphone and the second is more like a "remote control" screen for those on MDs.

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.