Questions on ZWave source code

[kinman]

Why ZWave, with the Insteon stuff almost done? There is a battle for what the industry sees as a big opportunity. Some private solutions like Lutron are doing very well. Zen-sys and Insteon are trying to get in as are UPB, Echelon and possibly others. Insteon has a broad product offering due to the parent company's business of selling home automation stuff to geeks. Zen-sys went after big players and landed some major customers- Cooper, Leviton and Intermatic. This leaves only smaller players for the other technologies. And over the next few years we will probably see a lot of ZWave lighting stuff at retail. The Intermatic stuff is in Home Depots and Lowes around the US already. Unfortunately except for lighting there isn't much other ZWave stuff of interest yet. A few thermotats, some PIR's and not much else yet.

I am forced to choose ZWave. Insteon do not product 240V. And those powerline signals will interfere my audio amp. It needs a lot of filters, transformer to reduce it. Clipsal use CAT5 but need to re-wire everything. Its expensive and not open source.

[kinman]

Kinman,
Are you for real?!?
There's lots of documentation out there..
There ARE reasons to program in C++ vs Ruby
If I know C++, I would have programmed in that instead.
The only reasons I did it in Ruby were:
1.  It was available
2.  Less of a learning curve..
3.  It's INTERPRETED.. meaning I could test my code instantly to make sure it worked.

I would suggest you start READING some wiki's on THIS site.

Nobody spoon fed me with code, I had to dig, lots of trial and error...

I coughed up the $$ for Insteon Devkit, even though Pluto has one too..

Search the wiki for GSD RUBY... that should give you a start..

Thanks Dan. Let me scan through the wiki 1st.

[1audio]

The Insteon dev kit is not cheap but the Zen-sys one is expensive at over $5K last I looked. I can contact my sources about making the details available under NDA. Once you sign the agreement with Zen-sys there are no other options unless Zen-sys changes the rules. ZWave is difficult to write for. Its got a lot of low level stuff to deal with, a consequence of making the chips as small and cheap as possible. The code in some of the commercial switches took six months to get right and the better handheld remotes were a year project to get working.
The best case would be to get a few volunteers to sign an NDA and work with the existing code. I can make some of the tools available and samples devices once there is a commitment in place and Pluto agrees. Unfortunately since its commercial it can't be published as source code under any of the open licenses.

[ddamron]

Wouldn't that be a show stopper for developing it in Ruby?

[1audio]

A really crack programmer can overcome any hurdle (just add a link to the machine code somewhere..and hand tune it). Actually I don't know. However for something like the ZWave system an interpreted language may add a lot of overhead, Not important until the system is at its limits playing an H.264 HD file at 50 MBps. And the low level stuff and code examples from Zen-sys are all in C I think.

[ddamron]

hmm... Timing might prove tough...
I'm surprised they don't handle all that in their chips...  There are certain timing considerations for Insteon too, but the PLM pretty much insulates the programmer from them...  The new versions of the PLM can communicate full bore..  while the older versions required you to wait until it echoed your character back before you send another one..

Ahh well, I guess I'll have to knuckle down and learn C++..

All in good time..

Dan

[totallymaxed]

The Insteon dev kit is not cheap but the Zen-sys one is expensive at over $5K last I looked. I can contact my sources about making the details available under NDA. Once you sign the agreement with Zen-sys there are no other options unless Zen-sys changes the rules. ZWave is difficult to write for. Its got a lot of low level stuff to deal with, a consequence of making the chips as small and cheap as possible. The code in some of the commercial switches took six months to get right and the better handheld remotes were a year project to get working.
The best case would be to get a few volunteers to sign an NDA and work with the existing code. I can make some of the tools available and samples devices once there is a commitment in place and Pluto agrees. Unfortunately since its commercial it can't be published as source code under any of the open licenses.

I don't know about the Insteon dev kit but the Zensys Dev Kit is primarily aimed at companies for sure but also at companies that are looking at intergrating Z-wave into a hardware product of some description. What we need inside lmce is good control/setup od commercially available Z-wave devices. We can do that, as we do now with the current z-wave binaries, using usb/serial interfaces. The key here is to understand the protocols and requirements for maintaining 2-way comms with the z-wave devices on the z-wave network. No Zensys source code is needed to do that. However the Zensys Dev Kit has good docs and example code to help educate yourself on how this is done.

[ddamron]

Umm... yeah..  The Insteon devkit is same.. very technical, which is nice...

Lemme finish with the Insteon, I had a meltdown today ..
I broke my install, trying to get my MD going, I MUST have deleted my DCERouter..
Anywho, I've got it reinstalled, and have a complete backup of my code.. phew!

So, all development I wanted to get done, didn't.

I'd like to have it all completed before 2008..

so now, I'm rebuilding everything, I have a backup from the old system, I just don't want to install it, it MAY remove this DCE..
so, I'm adding devices, etc..

I think I needed to reinstall anyway, I think my old system was getting warped from all the tests I've been doing..
suttle tweaks that don't quite work... hehe

After my insteon, I'll take a closer look into the zwave..  I might be able to use the same 'framework'... who knows..

Oh yeah, Merry christmas!

Dan

[kinman]

A ZWave packet sniffer captures the activities from wall switch. If LinuxMCE supports this device and receives the light states like PIR does, will Lutron sue LinuxMCE as a software solution?

[ddamron]

Did Lutron make the packet sniffer???

[kinman]

I don't think so I can only see all are end user products.

[ddamron]

Can you rephrase that, I read your reply 3 times, and still can't understand it...

[1audio]

In ZWave there is a signal that comes from the switch when you press it but its low level and meant to only reach a controller within 3 feet. Its not sent around the network. In the Leviton version of the system they program their switches to send a signal to the controller over the network.

The Zniffer is not a product. Its only a developer tool to look at signals. Leviton and Lutron announced a settlement this month. No details however.
       
The ZWave stack in LMCE needs some work and it may be possible to license the Leviton technology as long as it supports the Leviton switches only to add to it. Any volunteers to work on it? It may require NDA's etc to be able to work on it.

[kinman]

Can you rephrase that, I read your reply 3 times, and still can't understand it...

Ooops sorry. I can only find the consumer products from Lutron. They don't sell RF sniffer.

[kinman]

In ZWave there is a signal that comes from the switch when you press it but its low level and meant to only reach a controller within 3 feet. Its not sent around the network. In the Leviton version of the system they program their switches to send a signal to the controller over the network.

Hi 1audio, if the signal from the switch is not sent over the network, how can be a plugin module associated with the transmitter/switch?