More then one IR interface live in HS?

[smcwilliams]

Presently I have Ocelot driven IR control in one room of our house, but have wanted to expand to two other zones/rooms as well. Is it possible to get an IRTrans/Ethernet and use it with your plugin for one of these other rooms first (without changing the Ocelot setup in the first room), then order another unit to replace the Ocelot setup already working in the first room? It's a question of time available and WAF to keep the first room "in production".

I wasn't clear if HS would support two IR interfaces live at the same time, or if I'd have to make an initial cutover entirely from Ocelot & Adiocelot plugin to the IRtrans ethernet unit and plugin.


Cheers,
Scott

[YoYo]

Hi Scott,

I really don't know if you can have more than one IR interface or not...

However, you could make use of the irclient command line utility that's included with the IRTrans software to send IR for the time being if it turned out that you can't have more than one IR interface.

In this scenario, you'd leave the Ocelot as the IR interface until you were ready to make the switch, and use the command line utility, called by HomeSeer, to send IR via your IRTrans devices. In other words, use the IRTrans device without it really being a part of HomeSeer. I see the irclient utility can receive commands too, but I'm not sure how it all works; so if you'd need to receive and match IR, that might be a little more tricky if it's not the IR interface.

[smcwilliams]

Thanks for the answer. I think I will go ahead and get one IRTrans/Ethernet and use it the way you suggest, then plan on cutting over from the Ocelot setup afterwards.


Cheers,
Scott

[Michael McSharry]

Homeseer itself only supports a single IR interface, but mcsXap virtualizes the Homeseer interface so it is then able to supports multiple IR interfaces. It would mean that the IRTrans plugin would need to support the xAP protocol. There are a few IR interfaces already supported with xAP. Ocelot, Redrat, UIRT are three that I know of and there may be more.

[YoYo]

Hi Michael,

That's interesting. The IRTrans plug-in talks to a program called IRServer. The idea is that it abstracts what the IR clients need to do to talk to the product line. I've noticed that it has a -xap switch, but really don't know much about xap, or the actual mechanics of using it.

I guess I wonder if the IRServer program supports xap, is there a need for a special plug-in, since the plug-in only talks to IRServer anyways? In other words, I wonder one could simply load IRServer with -xap option, then with mcsXap in HS, would that be enough, or how does it work?

I guess I'd like to see xap as an option for IRTrans...