xapmcs1wire

[lancenorton]

Hi,

I'm very new to the xap plugin and I don't really understand it, but I have had some success, with the 1-wire installation.

But I would like to know how I can poll my devices more often than every minute, which seems to be the lowest setting, within the sample interval.

How do I also add either degrees C or degrees F to the temperature reading? Would want the symbol but don't know where that is on my keyboard .

Thanks

[Rupp]

Lance,
What in the world is the xapMCS1Wire?

[turner228]

Its One of Michaels xAP applications

http://wiki.xapautomation.org/tiki-i...ge=xAPmcs1Wire

Strictly speaking not a Homeseer Application but it interfaces to Homeseer through one of the two plugins

The description seems to have gone missing so I will add it here

"Attached is xAPmcs1Wire.exe which is an xap interface to Dallas 1-wire network using DS9097U (serial) DS9490 (USB) or functional equivalent PC adapters to the 1-wire network. A full set of 1-wire/Ibutton devices typical of an HA environment are supported. This includes temperature, voltage, humidity, lightning count, water flow, rainfall, wind direction, wind speed, relays, switches, air pressure and probably some others that don't come to mind at the moment. I'm making it available to enhance the library of BSC-compliant applications.

The software uses the drivers developed by the Dallas Semiconductor. If not already installed on the PC then they can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.dalsemi.com/pub/auto_id/li...ers_v400b3.exe
Earlier version of these drivers will also function, however some devices are not supported with the _v3 and erlier drivers. These drivers utilize the Microsoft Jave Virtual Machine. The JAVA VM will need to be enabled on the PC.

The file can be placed anywhere. It will create a \config subfolder and may create a \data subfolder. When executed it will run in the tray and a mouse click on the icon will provide selection options which include "Setup" "IO Window" and "Exit". The other options have been disabled as they only have meaning in the context of a system with other xap nodes that support health, redundancy management and centralized configuration management.

The "Setup" will show a Windows GUI that I quickly put together to provide a stand-alone user interface. Normally this node is configured via a centralized configuration user interface. The xap schema to support the configuration discovery and modification are still enabled, but will cause no harm.

The application-layer logic of this node was extracted from an existing Homeseer plugin so some of the setup context is not obvious. For typical use the "Poll" button, the Metric/English units selection, and the sample interval will be the only setup items of interest.

The analog values are returned using the xapBSC.info schema. The discrete values are reported with xapBSC.event and set with xapBSC.cmd. All aspects of the BSC 1.3 schema have been implemented. Each 1-wire device has 6 xAP UID values reserved. This means a little over 40 devices can be supported per instance of the application. The body of the BSC xap message also has a Database=True key/value as these values are intended to be recorded by the xap datacollection node."

20-Dec Link to Wiki updated for new version - Kevin

[lancenorton]

Rupp - You put me on to it from one of your threads, it basically reads info from your 1-wire network through the xAP plugin.

http://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=100544

It's free and simple, just what I wanted, I just want to update the temps more often and have a degree symbol. Used to use Pete Garyga 1-wire plugin but could not get it to work on my new HS server and couldn't get hold of Pete for help.

Thanks for the tip!!!!

[Michael McSharry]

If you want to poll discretes at a higher rate then the Switch Interval setting can be used and it has millisecond interval units. 300 milliseconds was about as fast as I could make it when I was testing. What do you have that you want faster update rates? I may be able to accomodate if I understand what the objective is.

The numbers delivered are scaled to F or C based upon the setup settings. They are delivered as raw numbers just like any "sensor" would provide them. xapmcs1Wire is just one of many data-providing nodes in my architecture. I use another module (xapmcsEnvironment which is not ready for public consumption) that provides the human interface for setup of all of these remote agents and that is were I do the setup and formatting of the BSC data into nice HTML strings for display in Homeseer's devices. I recognize the new BSC 1.3 schema does contain an optional field for display, but I elected not to include it because I wanted to isolate the display formatting from the telemetry. I'm assuming you are using James' Homeseer plugin. You'll need to ask him about display string formatting options he is providing.

[lancenorton]

Micheal - I can only seem to get it to update HS every 1 min and 1 sec, I would just like it to update more regulary, I want to control an extractor fan by the temp and would not want it running for longer than needed.

I'm using the xAP conduit v 0.8.128, I'm not sure whose version this is. What are the differences between them?

[Michael McSharry]

I believe James has the only conduit published. It has its own forum on this message board as well as a home on his site. Seem like you may have an older version based upon the rev. Check his formum on this board to see what the most current it.

What I did was change the interval to seconds rather than minutes and added 3 setup keys to allow a user to decide if they want State, DisplayText, and Database Keys displayed. State will always be included for discretes; Stream will always be included for Analog; Otherwise user configurable. The DisplayText is formatted as an HTML table. It includes icons and it contains the degree symbol. If you want to use the DisplayText key, and your conduit supports it, then you will likely need to get the icons. The easiest way is to install mcsTemperature from the Updater, but then remove it as a plugin from Homeseer.

The update is attached here. If someone has access to the xap wiki then feel free to update it there is well.

[lancenorton]

Michael - The changes are great thank you, but I'm having a few problems, from your post earlier, you say that there is another xAP plugin for HS, I cant seem to see this where exactly is it.

[Michael McSharry]

There are two of my plugins that have been mentioned. One is a mcsXap and one is mcsEnvironment. The first is similiar to the one James published on this message board in the 3rd Party plugins area. I never did update it to handle BSC 1.3 so it would be of no value as a companion to xapmcs1Wire. mcsEnvironment is the version 5 of mcsTemperature. It is not released and when released it will be priced similiar to mcsTemperature. xapmcs1Wire is actually a component of the overall mcsEnvironment package.

There was some recent discussion on the xap Plugin forum about where the current version of the plugin really resides. If you read that thread you should be able to identify where to get the latest. I tried to make xapmcs1Wire compliant with the BSC 1.3 spec so James's plugin should be able to provide the direct interface. That was my intention when I added BSC 1.3 to this component of mcsEnvironment.

[bruce l]

Well I hope this all comes together - I got a Lantronix unit coming and will use xAP to provide the interfaces as I want other software to run some of these things besides HS. I mostly want reliablity with decent flexability - it seems xAp should provide those.

[lancenorton]

I'm still having some problems, HS is not getting any new readings after a couple of hours, but the IO window in xapmcs1wire confirms that the data is still being captured?

Any ideas?

I also get these error messages when HS starts

Conduit~!~------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17/12/2004 20:59:48~!~xAP Conduit~!~No xAP hub was detected. If HomeSeer will be the only xAP application running on
17/12/2004 20:59:48~!~xAP Conduit~!~this machine then this is fine. However should you wish to have more than one xAP
17/12/2004 20:59:48~!~xAP Conduit~!~application running on this machine then you should launch a xAP hub first, before
17/12/2004 20:59:48~!~xAP Conduit~!~any xAP applications including Homeseer. See www.xapautomation.org for more info.
17/12/2004 20:59:48~!~xAP Conduit~!~------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
when i install the hub it tells me that i already have one running?

[turner228]

Presumably this is the service hub

I think you need to shut down homeseer, install the hub and start it, or at least set it to auto start. Then reboot, the hub should be running
You can check using the viewer program because the hub sends out a heartbeat

You must have a hub if you run more than one xAP program
homeseer conduit is one
the one wire is another
and so is the viewer
so to run viewer you need a hub

and the hub must be the first to run

HTH
Kevin

[Michael McSharry]

xapmcs1Wire will wait for a hub to come online. I suspect that the homeseer xap conduit will claim port 3639 if a hub is not running when it starts and then if you try to run a hub it is not able to get access to port 3639. If you are using the service hub, then make certain you are not also running any other xap services since the same problem may occur. When I was running the xap slimp3 connector this was a problem for me and I handled it by running everything from my startup folder with a .vbs file that assured the hub was started first, a short delay, then all other xap applications.

[lancenorton]

Michael - Is there any chance that the HS devices (temp sensors) could be updated with the last change even if there wasn't a last change?

I have my temp sensors read every 30 secs, so if at 12:00:00pm the temp was say 21 and then at 12:00:30pm the temp changed to 21.5 then the last change is updated, but if the temp stayed constant for an hour then the last change would still read 12:00:30pm as the temp stayed the same, whilst I realise this is correct it would be nice for this to be changed every time it reads a temp, just to make sure that everything is still alive, or alternativly another device stating the last time the sensors were read?

Thanks in advance

[Michael McSharry]

The basic intent of the xap schema is to report changes. The schema also provides a mechanism to request current status. You can send an xap message, via the xap plugin, at whatever interval you like from a periodic event in homeseer. The target will be xapmcs1wire. I believe the schema will be xapbsc.query.

The next concern is how the xap plugin updates the last change field of homeseer. If it always updates for any received message then you are fine. If not then you will need to ask James to provide such a capability.