[asp] Rover (free web interface for handhelds, slow links, old browsers, etc.) Discussion

[Hunter Green]

Rover support has been moved to here. Please disregard the remainder of this thread.

[JustinGould]

Thanks for the plug Hunter, very nice of you

Justin

For PocketPC, Palm, and cell phone control:
http://wapseer.carrotpatch.net/
Got WAP?

[lshanepowers]

The documentation looks good. You asked for suggestions so here goes. How about scene support for Compose. Where you have the different percentages to dim, you could have 10 different scenes. The scene name could show when you roll over the icon. Rick Tinker wrote the plugin so he should be able to help with the implementation. It sounds like some future scene control will be based on the Compose plug-in, so hopefully scene support would work for future implementations of scenes. Thanks for the great work.

-Shane

[Hunter Green]

I'm not really familiar with Compose so I don't really know what commands are needed for it or how to approach it. Can you point me towards some documentation about it, or towards a HomeSeer web site where I can see the web interface to it, or better yet both?

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[Hunter Green]

I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts on the icon paths issue, but having thought about it on my own a bit, I'm leaning towards the idea of having Rover have its own set of icons in the Rover directory which are included with it. I have modified my own copy of Rover accordingly, just to see how I like it. To keep the Rover directory from getting confusing, I've moved snippets into a "snippets" subdirectory and icons are in the "icons" and "icons/thermostats" subdirectories as well. I've also taken this opportunity to change the colors in my dim-bar graphics for better contrast, particularly on grayscale and black-and-white devices. So that's where v0.4 is heading unless folks suggest other directions.

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[lshanepowers]

Not familiar with Compose

Check out powers.zapto.org:8080 for the web interface with homeseer. All of the scenes are namable even though I don't have most of mine named right now. I have attached the help file for Compose to help explain the interface. Hope that helps.

Thanks

[Hunter Green]

Since I don't have this "Compose" thing, it's a pretty big chunk of stuff to absorb just to implement something I can't even test or use. That's a bit more time than I want to invest in that right now, sorry.

Perhaps if you could narrow things down a little for me? I think what you need is to have a few "action" commands added that let you put links into your snippets which do specific Compose-related things, so if you could tell me what you'd want those actions to be able to do, and what commands should be executed as a result, I could add those. Or perhaps you need something else, but I'm not sure what. If you could be more specific I might be able to implement it without having to research the whole Compose system.

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[lshanepowers]

Sorry, I should have given a better explanation. Thanks for looking into this though. Basically Compose works by sending and receiving preset dim commands. The preset dims don't correlate to a specific level though. They correlate to a scene setting. Typically with Compose, you have multiple dimmers in a given room on the very same address. The keypad sends out a preset dim and all the dimmers on the same address respond accordingly to how they are set. I have attached a chart that shows what preset dims correlate to what scenes.

A fairly simple way(I think) to add some Compose support would be to have just 6 scenes(preset dim 0=off 1=on 2=scene a 3=scene b 4=scene c 5=scene d Compose considers on and off a scene also even though it does resond to standard x-10 on/off, just not exactly the same way). If you could have the dimmer bar like you use but instead of percentages, have scene letters(A-D) or scene names. That would be great.

Fortunately since you use the status of a device, the scene that compose is in shows up already. It is just a matter of sending out a preset dim to change scenes.

Hope this all makes sense. Thanks again for looking into this. I'm getting ready to purchase a palm with 802.11b so the timing is perfect for your program.

-Shane

[GenevaDude]

I posted the following in the "original" thread, but hey, this is the original thread!

Rather than being redundant, here is a link: web page My message with a new dimbar set is there near the end of the thread.

Note, the message refers to the previous version. (But I did create a smaller set of dim bars; then I found this thread and discovered Hunter has created a newer set as well!)

regards,

GenevaDude

[Hunter Green]

Edit: the message below is based on a misconception! I'm leaving it in in case it's illuminating on things, though. I now see GenevaDude really is replacing the off and on icons, not adding in new icons. I can make this easier to do by simply including a copy of "off.gif" and "on.gif" called "dim-0.gif" and "dim-100.gif" and then you can simply replace the icon if you prefer a solid-dimbar look to a bulb-dimbar-bulb look, without any coding hacks required.

Old, obsolete message:
The 0 dimbar icon does do something Rover can't do right now: achieve that "on but dimmed to 0" status that is so useful for achieving soft starts on conventional lamp modules and switches. However, it's not something I really need to do interactively -- when I want a light at 0% it happens from an event on a schedule -- which is why I didn't include that. Should I include that in the main release, what do other people think?

The 100 dimbar icon doesn't do anything Rover can't already do, because the "on" button always brings the light up to 100%. I don't see any useful distinction, even in X-10, between "on" and "dim 100%" (though for some reason I still can't fathom, HomeSeer itself not only makes such a distinction but sometimes reports my devices as "Dim 100%" when they're not even on). The only thing this means you can't do is turn on a light that goes on at a previously-remembered level without overriding that level; to do that, I'd need to change the functionality of the current "on" button and then add in a 100% button. I don't think that's worth it, but I'll listen if folks want to argue otherwise.

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[This message was edited by Hunter Green on Mon, 16 June 2003 at 08:30 AM.]

[Hunter Green]

So "Compose" appears as a device? How can a script know that a particular device is a Compose device -- there isn't a dev.misc bit for it, is there? If there's some way to detect that a particular device is a Compose device, I can make it show different controls for that device which do the preset-dim commands, but first I need to detect the situation before I can handle it.

Scene names for those controls might be a bit big to fit onto a small screen, but more importantly, how can I find out what the scene names are, from within the script? Putting in fixed buttons (off, A, B, C, D, on, for instance) would be simple enough.

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[Rick Tinker]

Hunter,

It's simple - contact the plug-in author. Me!

There is a bit set in MISC that indicates that the device uses the Compose protocol. Here is the value and the code from the plug-in that detects it in a device:
Public Const MISC_COMPOSE = &H800 ' compose protocol
If (dv.misc And MISC_COMPOSE) = MISC_COMPOSE Then

You can read the current state of the device by reading the status string or the value. The devices use the device status/value pairs so that when the plug-in changes the value to 50 for example, the status string automatically displays "(UnKnown)".

Here is the full list. Note that some are proceeded with a tilde, and one is conditionally proceeded with a tilde. The tilde is never displayed to the user, but it controls whether the status string is made available as a command. In this case, if the Compose Firewall is present or the device is a CI Dimmer, then the Poll Status command is allowed. It is always displayed as a status for value 31 though.

Scene Off, 49
Off, 0
Scene On, 1
On, 37
Bright, 35
Dim, 36
Ramp Down, 14
Ramp Up, 15
~Off Replied, 16
~On Replied, 17
Ramp Stop, 30

If bFirewall Or CIDimmer Then
   Poll Status, 31
Else
   ~Poll Status, 31
End If

' The next FOR loop sets the values 2 through 13 as the command "Set to Scene" for scenes 1 through 12, and sets values 18 through 29 to "Scene Response".
For j = 1 To 12
   Set to Scene & ComposeData(HC2Num(hc), uc).SceneText(j), CStr(j + 1)
   ~Scene Response & ComposeData(HC2Num(hc), uc).SceneText(j), CStr(j + 17)
Next

~(Unknown), 50



If you want to know some script commands for getting the scene names (represented above by the SceneText property) just let me know.


Regards,

Rick Tinker
HomeSeer Technologies

[GenevaDude]

Hunter,

It appears that Dim-00.gif and Dim-100.gif may not be the right names (Dim-Off and Dim-On perhaps?), but changing the name of the On and Off gifs would make it show the bars for all devices. I think they ought to be differentiated so that on and off only devices show on and off bulbs. If you have an idea for another set of names, let me know.

By the way, I claim no particular ownership for the bar graph gifs I created. All I did was create a set that were narower than Hunters, then played with the colors a bit. The palette for the gifs are based on the standard 256 color web palette. I do not pretend to be an artist. I don't really like the results too much either and I spent far too much time on them. So if you (anybody) can do better, please do! I might want yours instead!

regards,

GenevaDude

[Hunter Green]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GenevaDude:
It appears that _Dim-00.gif_ and _Dim-100.gif_ may not be the _right_ names (Dim-Off and Dim-On perhaps?), but changing the name of the On and Off gifs would make it show the bars for all devices.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's what I meant by the above. The rover folder would contain an "off.gif" and a "dim-0.gif" but in the default installation, both files would contain the same image, the off-bulb icon. Rover would use "off.gif" for appliance modules and "dim-0.gif" for dimmables, but since they were the same icon, someone looking at the Rover screen wouldn't know there was a difference. But in your setup, you could just replace dim-0.gif with a different icon, and voila, you'd see something different for dimmables. But since off.gif wasn't changed, you'd still see the off-bulb on appliance modules.

I admit it's a bit wasteful to have the default installation contain two copies of the same icon with different filenames (worse yet since both are a copy of another icon you already have somewhere else!) but the flexibility gained is worth the few extra bytes taken up.

I think the logical name for these, by extension from "dim-10.gif" to "dim-90.gif", is "dim-0.gif" and "dim-100.gif". (No need for a second 0 in dim-0.gif, though.)

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs

[Hunter Green]

GenevaDude, mind if I include your dimbar icons in the distribution archive as an alternative set?

Nucleus Home Automation | System Specs