Xapmcs1wire setup issues

[Wadenut]

Ive installed the mcsxap hub, xapmcs1wire and the xapmcs plugin (currently disabled).
I'm trying to set up xapmcs1wire.
Connected: Hobby Boards Barometer. For some reason however, what shows up in the sensor list is Humidity, Temperature, 3 Voltage Sensors, Sunlight, and Switch. No barometer.
I did have an AAG Temperature/Humidity sensor connected as well. This was properly recognized. I since disconnected this, deleted the contents of the ini and restarted with only the barometer until I get it straightened out.
I should note, this device has always been properly recognized by mcsTemperature.

[Michael McSharry]

Your barometer is based upon a circuit that is interfaced via the DS2438 chip. Humidity sensors are also interfaced via a DS2438 as well as many other things. The DS2438 is basically an Analog to Digital converter that can be used for many applications.

For your humidity sensor that was detected use the pulldown to change the sensor type from humidity to barometer. You need to setup the slope and offset for the barometer as well.

You will fine the same thing happening with DS2423 which is a counter. Many things are interfaced through a device that simply counts. What the count means will depend upon the circuit behind it.

[Wadenut]

I thought I'd tried that. I did look at many of the other senors, where the only option was Delete. Anyway, that done, now the "Barometer" is reading 30.16 mbar, where I'd rather prefer 1021.36 mbar unless I were living on Mars.
The sensor doesn't seem to be updating either, even through several restarts.

I'm afraid I have a long road ahead. I pulled my rain gauge down yesterday to replace the counter board and now my wind instrument has stopped responding. These are priority 1 right now.

[Michael McSharry]

Use the IO window to look at the raw data readings from the DS2438. I believe the second analog voltage is used with the calculation being Voltage * slope + offset. I would expect the voltage (i.e. baro reading) to change very slowly since baro pressure changes very slowly.

[Wadenut]

Now that I have all the hardware working again with mcsTemp I can turn my attention back to xap. I'm a little overwhelmed by the whole thing at the moment, so I'm going to start from scratch and I'll be taking baby steps so please be patient with me.
At the moment, I have mcsxaphub and mcsxap1wire on my desktop. Should these packages actually be located within the HS subdirectory?

[Wadenut]

Getting nowhere fast.
First, although I can configure most of my 1-wire devices correctly, the barometer reads out 32.23 even though it's configured as metric. 32 looks more like what I'd expect in inches. The slope and offset are properly entered. There is no device configurable as baro rate.
In both xapmcshub and xapmcs1wire, System Config and System Status (right click on tray icon) do nothing. In the xapmcs1wire browser, the Temp08 and 1Wire menu items result in "page not found".

[Michael McSharry]

The only options that are active in the tray icon are the Browser and Exit options

I dont recall the specifics, but I believe the links at the top of the browser pages are based upon a links.htm file in the html folder. This was the HS 1.x standard. You need to edit it with whatever links you want to appear at the top.

The baro will need to be looked at in more detail to see what the implementation does.

I recommend you do not put our xap applications other that mcsXap plugin in the same folder or in the same folder as HS. They share similiar file names and they will be overwriting each other. I have an xap parent folder and then folders for each applicaiton under it.

[Wadenut]

I had Xap in a "\XAP" directory under "\Homeseer 2". Is that OK? It makes for easier backups.

Any progress on the barometer?

[Michael McSharry]

Having the root under Homeseer 2 is OK, but you then should have a folder structure under that so common filename will not be overwritten.

The equation for baro is the same for metric and english as the user enters the slope and offset parameters. Value(3) is the DS2438 voltage reading used for the hobby-boards barometer which I believe is the same as the AAG one. The .calibration(0,0) is the general device calibration user input. the two nBaro values are the baro-speciifc user inputs

nBaro = CSng(.Value(3)) * nBaroCalibrationSlope + nBaroCalibrationOffset + .Calibration(0, 0)

[Wadenut]

As a user, knowing little to nothing of the internal works of the program, I entered the same slope and offset as I use with mcsTemp, and selected the "metric' checkbox. In mcsTemp, the result is correct. Why then, was the result 30.16 , where it ought to have been 1021.36. If one does the calculation, this is an exact conversion from inches mercury to hPa (millibar). Seems the 'metric' checkbox does nothing then.

[Michael McSharry]

So the setup is different between the two and now you know what is needed. The metric should affect the label used on the display.

mcsTemperature came first and xapmcs1wire in general is an improvement on the 1-wire interface that is in mcsTemperature. I do not have a barometer so I would not have noticed any setup differences. I do not want to change either one now since there are users of both and no need to make them change.

[Wadenut]

Again, I'm not the programmer.
The conversion between inHg and mbar is about 33.863886666718315.
I've tried every permutation here, applying that conversion to borh/either slope and offset in xapmcs. No application of the above results in the correct value in mbar, ie the same value as mcsTemperature. One or the other is wrong. I could play until I got the correct "current" value, but couldn't be assured this would ever result in the proper curve.
Evidently, no-one else is dealing with the metric issue - else they're either quiet about it or have given up. It makes little sense that the s/w deals correctly with the temperature and rain values but not with the pressure.

[Michael McSharry]

You are likely the first with metric barometer. I also noticed with the barometer the rate was not being computed so the rising / falling information was not valid. I did change it with 2.7.8 to do the conversion similiar to mcsTemperature. Without this change you could have multiplied both your slope and offset values by the 33.86 on the setup.

While it does not directly affect you I also changed the polling user entry so it remembers the fastest polling rate selected for a device rather than the polling rate entered for the hightest indexed device. This will be a more natural UI.

[Wadenut]

I'll give 2.7.8 a try. The last version I knew of was 2.7.0.7.
Thank-you.

[Wadenut]

OK, now we're getting there.
The barometer is reading correctly now in hPa.
Temperature and Humidity sensors are all good.
Rain can't be tested right now.

There are some remaining issues however.

-There is no barometer trend sensor. Perhaps there isn't supposed to be one?
-My wind direction sensor is showing an orange indicator and reads North. This sensor works fine under mcsTemp so I know the hardware is OK. [Added: Looks like this sensor is actually down.]
-Wind speed is right out of whack. I've left this in mph until I'm sure it's working. There are two pairs of sensors which might be the correct wind speed/gust. One pair reads 7 mph for speed. This may have been correct at the time, but the wind gust reads 0 constantly. The other pair is reading about 3000-4000 mph on both the speed and gust... same number on each at any given time. I have an AAG wind instrument and can't find much documentation on its cal. I've assumed 2 counts per 1 mph as suggested in the xapmcs doc. Adjusting this value had no effect on the second pair.

The other problem I'd noticed is that the sampling rate can't be changed from 60000 ms on the Setup page. I got around this by shutting down xapmcs1wire, editing the config and restarting. Probably a one time adjustment so not a big deal.

If there's anything I can do on this end, do let me know.