xapmcs1Wire - 1 Wire (DS9097U / DS9490D) xAP Node

[Michael McSharry]

I agree with you that the multiple UI is a challenge. I do have some things that consolidate access, but it is not ready for general consumption. The human UI presents more of a challenge than any other part of the development. I have gone down some dead ends in this quest, but that is the nature of R&D.

The only thing that happened with the JVM is that Microsoft was forbidden to include their version with Windows. The courts did not rule that developers could no longer use it and DallasSemi's response was that they were using features of JVM that were only available from Microsoft. In the .NET environment a new set of drivers are available which I do not think are tied to the MS JVM.

[Steve Q]

Michael,

Thanks for your help, I have the relay board up and running and controlling my baseboard heaters (energy management mode). I have a couple of questions:

1. Which applications must be running at all times? It looks like mcsxap1wire and messageviewer. Anything else?
2. In the event of a power failure, when the computer restarts automatically, what order should the programs be loaded?
3. Why doesn't the HomeSeer Status page auto refresh when I turn the relay ON or OFF? Is this a polling interval issue?

Thanks,
Steve Q

[Michael McSharry]

An xAP hub is needed. All my applications wait for the hub to start, but others, such as the xAP viewer become impatient and start performing the hub function themselves if they start before the hub starts. I would not include the xAP viewer in your startup, or if you do then sequence it to be after xapmcsHub. The xAP Viewer is primarily a debugging tool and can be started later when it is needed.

The xaphub and xapmcs1wire is all that is needed to support the 1-wire interface when it is used by Homeseer. When xapmcs1wire starts it will search the 1-wire bus for any and all sensors. I do not know if it is ready to accept commands from Homeseer before this is done or not. It can find discrete devices quickly. A/D devices take about 1 second each.

I do not know what the design is for the HS UI. Other regular users may be able to make a better guess.

[cadillackid]

resolution setting not working for all sensors

I have all my ds18b20's set to low resolution which im assuming is 9-bit for the 1-wire bus? bit some of my sensors still churn out readings like 32.125 or such indicating they are in a higher resolution. I tried unchecking the low res box and saving, then rechecking the low-res box and saving and still no good.. is there a place in the INI file i need to set this also or should the browser be populating this?
-Christopher

[Michael McSharry]

I had use a library constant RESOLUTION_9_BITS to set the desired resolution. Turns out that this is not what it was expecting, but wanted a value of the actual resolution which will be 0.0625 or 0.5 for the two settings provided in xapmcs1Wire. It has been corrected in V2.1.2

[Steve Q]

An xAP hub is needed. All my applications wait for the hub to start, but others, such as the xAP viewer become impatient and start performing the hub function themselves if they start before the hub starts. I would not include the xAP viewer in your startup, or if you do then sequence it to be after xapmcsHub. The xAP Viewer is primarily a debugging tool and can be started later when it is needed.

The xaphub and xapmcs1wire is all that is needed to support the 1-wire interface when it is used by Homeseer. When xapmcs1wire starts it will search the 1-wire bus for any and all sensors. I do not know if it is ready to accept commands from Homeseer before this is done or not. It can find discrete devices quickly. A/D devices take about 1 second each.

Michael,

Yesterday I spent some time configuring my Homeseer computer to startup properly after a power failure. We have had several outages in the past few months. During this process I realized that xapmcsHub was not running. xAP viewer was acting as the hub. I tried several times to get the xap network running with xapmcshub and xap1wire but no luck. So I reverted back to following load sequence:

1. XP has the following programs in the startup file: Homeseer2, speaker client, itunes, xAP viewer, and McAfee.
2. Homeseer loads and then starts xapmcs1wire 4 minutes later.

This load sequence seems to work consistently.

Do you think I should keep trying to get xapmcshub to work in leiu of xApViewer? or should I just let xAP viewer perform the hub function?
Does xAPmcsHub offer any advantages?

Steve Q

[Michael McSharry]

They both provide the hub function. xapmcsHub should have a smaller footprint and consume fewer resources, but there is no harm in running xapViewer. There is also an xAP service hub from the same location that you obtained xAP viewer. It has the same guts that he viewer and may be a better choice than the xAP viewer since it will be running as a service so your desktop will not have the task bar clutter of xap Viewer. If using the xAP viewer then keep your messages history setting in xAP viewer on the short side. A large message history slows xAP Viewer down.

On my computer were Homeseer and several of my xAP applications are running I use the following startXap.vbs file in the windows startup folder. In my case I want to wait for SQL Server, which runs as a service, to be ready before I start my applications that could be writing to the database. I also include the xAP hub as the first startup item in the list with the same startup delay allocated to SQL Server. Using something like this script gives me control of the startup sequence and makes it easy to add/remove items from the list.

On error Resume Next
HubViewer = "D:\Program Files\XAP\Viewer.exe"
Hubmcs = "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsHub\xapmcsHub.exe"
Applications = Array( _
  "-D:\Program Files\Homeseer\GuardianAngel.exe", _
  "-D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsWritelog\xapmcsWritelog.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\Homeseer\Homeseer.exe", _
  "-D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsScript\Script\xapScript.vbs", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsCM11A\xapmcsCM11A.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsUPB\xapmcsUPB.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsAdiOcelot\xapmcsAdiOcelot.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsW800\xapmcsRF.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsDatabase\xapmcsDatabase.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsTemp0x\xapmcsTemp0x.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcs1Wire\xapmcs1Wire.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\Homeseer\xapmcsEnvironment.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsWeatherXML\xapmcsWeatherXML.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsWeatherAWS\xapmcsWeatherAWS.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsAudrey\xapmcsAudrey.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsVaux\xapmcsVaux.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcsvoice\xapmcsVoice.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapmcschart\xapmcschart.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapEmailMonitor\MailMonitor.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\XAP\xapEmailOSD\NewEmailOSD.exe", _
  "D:\Program Files\mcsSprinklers\mcsSprinklers.exe" _
                   )
Const q = """"
set oShell = createObject("Wscript.shell")

oShell.Run q & Hubmcs & q

Wscript.Sleep 10000 'wait for SQL to be ready

for i = 0 to ubound(Applications)
    if left(Applications(i),1) <> "-"  then
        oShell.Run q & Applications(i) & q
    end if
Next

[bachelet claude]

McsOneWire Xap

Hi,
still stuck with my display not showing in Homeseer.
If i strat from an empty mcsOneWire config, all is well. it works on my test machine. If i try to add the display to my 'production' machine, the switches shows, but not the display.
i joined part of the debug file and the browser screen capture. Note the changed column don't change but i just change the display to TEXT.
A solution would be tocleanup everything and do a fresh start, but i have over Forty devices on 2 hubs, and as the system is working flawlessly, i'd rather not....

Never mind, as i have to build a script to display text, let's use Xap script.

so i created the 'afficheur .vbs' script from your 'stress' script and the homeseer messages i captured on my test machine when sending text to the display.
Xap UID of Xapscript is D001000

i get the following message (with XapMessageViewer :

Error Message: A xAP message received was malformed. The UID DD001001 is setup as a subaddress but the Source address is not: mcs.Script.BTW44208V1
Received From: 127.0.0.1:32768
xap-header
{
v=12
hop=1
uid=DD001001
class=xapBSC.Cmd
source=mcs.Script.BTW44208V1
target=mcs.onewire.landes-hs2:xapmcs1wire_Afficheur.de0000000066e329.text.3
}
output.state.1
{
Id=9B
State=OFF
text=Message recu
}

if i use the 'resend command' from the viewer after correcting the UID, the message goes, but nothing show on the display, or in the debug log of mcsOneWire.

What is wrong ?
thanks for your help

[bachelet claude]

Mcs One Wire Xap

i think files are missing

[Michael McSharry]

The message is malformed because the UID does not have 00 in the last two characters of a xapbsc.cmd schema. The "01" parameters in your .vbs file should be changed to "".

The xapmcs1Wire screen shot shows that the DS2408 (LCD Display) device is recognized by xapmcs1wire. It also shows that it has been selected to participate on the LAN with the "A"ccept checkbox.

If an xAPBSC.Query message is sent to mcs.OneWire.*:> then xapmcs1Wire will put out a message that shows the current status of the device. The end of the subaddress field transmitted will be .Text based upon the Text type selection pulldown. The first part of the subaddress will contain xapmcs1Wire_Afficheur and the middle will be the DE...29 unique ID for the DS2408 chip.

After this then mcsXap will show it as being availabe as a device and it should be "A"ccepted there and a HS device will be created. When the device string changes for this device then mcsXap will send an xAP message to change the LCD display. Make ceratain that the exact name received when doing the operation in the prior paragraph is the same name that is accepted with mcsXap.

[bachelet claude]

Mcs One Wire Xap

Thank you,
the script is OK now. and i can send commands to many devices.
when i send the query mcs.OneWire.*:> either with the script or with homeseer, i can see the message on the network, and McsOneWire responds with all his sensors, except, and that's the catch, the display.
I never see the message on the network, nothing with DE...29, neither with Xap message viewer, nor with Network Monitor.

[Michael McSharry]

I just uploaded V2.2.0 to add persistance in discrete processing. While you do not need this function, please download it so we are working with the same source to investigate the text issue.

[bachelet claude]

Xap MCS OneWire

i updated to 2.2.0. no change as expected.

[Michael McSharry]

I added debug output that goes to the file \data\xapmcsOneWire.txt that includes processing of the xapbsc.query. This will show some properties of all devcies that are in the dictionary of devices. The port number is the only thing I can see that will prevent the generation of the xAP message, but let us look at what is produced.

I also added a button at the bottom to perform a query of all the devices. This makes it easier to do the query without needing an external stimuli.

Update is posted at V2.3.0

[bachelet claude]

Xap MCS OneWire

Hi,

i installed version 2.3.0, set debug mode, click the magic button, and ... Homeseer sees the device, xap viewer sees the message, ....
I then used my Homeseer script to send messages to the display, so i can copy the message. The message goes out ok, you'll see in the zip file.
But, the display does not show anything ..... as if it doesn't receive the message ( nothing in the log).

I can still update the display with McsOneWire web page.