xAP has a new very 'basic' schema to allow for interoperability between low level devices. This schema would typically operate in addition to a more feature rich schema for the device. We called it 'Basic status and control' or BSC -- does what it say on the tin type approach .
The idea is that simple devices drop into three categories 'BINARY' devices whose state is only ON|OFF , 'LEVEL' devices represented as a 0-100% value and 'TEXT' devices where a value is a string. The latter also brings in some stream devices eg say newsfeeds but not high bandwidth or binary stream devices eg Audio (this is not classes as a simple device).
BSC caters for limited discovery - you can ask a device what hardware endpoints it has and of what type they are, you can also control them in a standard way and ask their state, lastly they report state changes (events) in a standard way. This allows a very simple interconnect between devices to be made and also a controller application like HS to adopt the devices quite naturally within its state model, allowing for control using contextual clicks etc. HomeSeer devices implemented via plugins appear as BSC devices on xAP and report their state and are controllable as xAP devices. More complex xAP devices can also be supported using their fuller schemas by import of the schema definition documents supplied by the xAPp author.
I have attached to this post v1.2 of the xAP BSC document and will now bring a section of a post over from Michael McSharry in the beta thread.
K
The idea is that simple devices drop into three categories 'BINARY' devices whose state is only ON|OFF , 'LEVEL' devices represented as a 0-100% value and 'TEXT' devices where a value is a string. The latter also brings in some stream devices eg say newsfeeds but not high bandwidth or binary stream devices eg Audio (this is not classes as a simple device).
BSC caters for limited discovery - you can ask a device what hardware endpoints it has and of what type they are, you can also control them in a standard way and ask their state, lastly they report state changes (events) in a standard way. This allows a very simple interconnect between devices to be made and also a controller application like HS to adopt the devices quite naturally within its state model, allowing for control using contextual clicks etc. HomeSeer devices implemented via plugins appear as BSC devices on xAP and report their state and are controllable as xAP devices. More complex xAP devices can also be supported using their fuller schemas by import of the schema definition documents supplied by the xAPp author.
I have attached to this post v1.2 of the xAP BSC document and will now bring a section of a post over from Michael McSharry in the beta thread.
K
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