X10 to Insteon Translator?

[eklee]

Is it possible to add an X10 to Insteon Translator? Currently I am using a homeseer event to trap X10 status, and execute a script that will turn on/off the corresponding Insteon lights. Thanks.

[TechnoCat]

If Insteon uses the same device codes (q-z) as Z-Wave, PowerTrigger should work as-is.

[eklee]

unfortunately, Insteon plugin uses non-standard housecode for devices. e.g., mine uses '\' as the house code.

Is it ok to do this for a workaround: Add a normal X10 translator, e.g. A1 to B1. Then manually edit settings.ini, change the [Translator] entry's CodeSet to A1:\1;?

[TechnoCat]

That should work, but better would be to add a list of house code to the Insteon wiki page, and then I'll add the codes to the plug-in. I recently had this discussion RE: UPB also. Since I run neither, I need a reference to know what to add. I'll also need to know if insteon dimming is relative or absolute.

[TechnoCat]

\ will be added in tomorrow's release, which will mostly fix an installer.txt error.

[eklee]

I am not sure if the character '\' is reserved for Insteon. Most likely it is assigned automatically by Homeseer2 upon the request of the Insteon plugin. i.e. other people might have another character for their Insteon/UPB house code.

Take a look at UltraStatus plugin, it seems to be able to detect all non-standard house codes that are currently assigned to various plugins, this seems to be a more elegant way to go.

[mnsandler]

plugins do not have a preassigned housecode. when a user installs a plugin that needs a new housecode, the plugin grabs the next one in line. Thus two installations could have different housecodes for the same plugin.

all of the special characters (after alphas) are reserved for plugin use.

so for your x10 translator, you might need to give the user the option to manually enter the destination HC, or add all the special characters to your dropdown.

[cwintermeyer]

You can change the default DeviceBaseCode for Insteon

FYI, the Insteon plug-in uses the slash in the housecode by default but it is not required. To change this, I shut down HS, opened the .MDB and did a quick search/replace in the devices table. Then, I edited the Insteon.INI and changed the DeviceBaseCode value to a letter from the slash so that any new devices added will use the letter. Not only did this allow me to use PowerTrigger for X10-to-Insteon translations, but this also resolves a problem with the Rover interface not being able to display devices with a slash in the housecode using Pocket Internet Explorer.

[MattPond]

plugins do not have a preassigned housecode. when a user installs a plugin that needs a new housecode, the plugin grabs the next one in line. Thus two installations could have different housecodes for the same plugin.

all of the special characters (after alphas) are reserved for plugin use.

so for your x10 translator, you might need to give the user the option to manually enter the destination HC, or add all the special characters to your dropdown.

For what it's worth, most of the homes I've done have '\' as the housecode for Insteon, but one of them ended up with ']' as the housecode. I'm guessing that was because Insteon wasn't the first plugin installed.

Hope that helps.

[TechnoCat]

I've adding a handful of characters in the 1.3 release (current release), including both of those. The next release will probably simply determine all the currently in-use housecodes and provide those as options, per suggestion/tip from Rick Tinker.

[eklee]

I've adding a handful of characters in the 1.3 release (current release), including both of those. The next release will probably simply determine all the currently in-use housecodes and provide those as options, per suggestion/tip from Rick Tinker.

Would it be possible to include the device names in a drop down as well? I think this would greatly enhance usability. e.g. A1 maps to 'Kitchen Light', A2 maps to 'Den Light', etc.