Jon00 Mini-Bee & Relay-Bee Home Automation Controllers

[Emotion]

Excellent scripts and documentation, very easy to follow and worked first time - thank you!

[prsmith777]

Ive had contact with the Maxi-Bee folks and they are considering doing a short run of the MaxiBee. They arent firm yet on when the new version is coming.
I would not have much interest in a multiboard minibee if this were to happen.

[jon00]

since MaxiBees are not available, how hard would it be to allow multiple MiniBees to work with this plugin?

I need at least 20 outputs.

I've just taken a look at this. I do not think it would take too much effort in getting this functional as much of the work was done (in 2009!) before I stopped for some reason.

Is there demand for a multiple board version?

[jon00]

The supplied DLL only supports one board. There is another DLL that can be used that does support multiple boards.

I did start to write an alternative which will support multiple mini-bee boards. I'm not sure how far I got with this so would have to take a look. I currently only have one board so may be difficult to test.

[prsmith777]

since MaxiBees are not available, how hard would it be to allow multiple MiniBees to work with this plugin?

I need at least 20 outputs.

[ceesmf]

Thanks for your quick reply, yes that would be acceptable and the script wouldn't be that hard
Will buy, after the holiday season, a mini bee and try
thanks again

[jon00]

If you disconnect the board and then reconnect, the board will come back on-line, however each output is randomly on or off. There is no pattern to this.

You can set them back to their last state with a simple script call, however this may not be acceptable.

[ceesmf]

Maybe I have to explain better, the board is connect via usb over wifi and that works flawlessy, but sometimes i have to reboot the router or there are other reasons wifi is not available for a moment.
I like to have systems wich are as fail-safe as possible, I'm not always at home to reload things for people who don't understand
When the wifi-connection is re-established, the dll for the board is automatically reloaded again, demo software from the maker (velleman) can connect, but homeseer looses track without even any error report, in fact reporting that a relay has switched while it hasn't. I created a kind of watchdog script to see if the board is there, increment a timer, see if the timer is really incremented ie the board is functioning, if not unload the plugin and reload it. unloading the plugin with your script goes well, but loading it , after an delay, not.
As the velleman board is only supported with an older, not fully supported homeseer plugin i considered to go for the mini bee and your plugin
(thanks for the good work anyway !)
Could you do a simple test, disconnect the mini bee, reconnect it and see if Homeseer still sees it as before ?
Would be very grateful

To be very clear, I prefer to go the way of the mini bee and not the way of the velleman board

[jon00]

To be honest I do not know. I've never heard of anyone who has the board go offline.

From the sound of your question, your K8055 drops it's USB connection and does not re-connect again without a reboot. My plugin enable/disable utility would never work in this case as the physical connection has failed and the K8055 plugin assumes that no board is connected.

[ceesmf]

Just one question about the mini-bee

If the board is disconnect while homeseer is running, will it automatically reconnect, reverting to its previous state or will homeseer have to be restarted?
I tried to use the velleman K8055 board, but when it is disconnected the only way to get it back is restarting homeseer
disabling/enabling the plugin with jon00 plugin's restart doesn't work
diasabling goes fine, enabling not; don't know why
tia

[zakrzep]

Does anyone in the US sell these?

Thanks

[Bulletcom]

Thanks very much.

[jon00]

Yes!

[Bulletcom]

Thanks Jon - the red battery in the pic is actually the 12v power supply I'm using to power the board. Still presume this is ok then?

[jon00]

Assuming the 12v Supply you are taking from the board replaces the red battery, then yes that is fine. Just remember that the maximum output switching current is 500mA from PL2. This should be fine for most relay coils.