xapmcsWebControl

[Guest]

You will require mcsXap plugin installing.

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=119121

[Michael McSharry]

The xapmcsWeb control manual describes how to setup a Homeseer environment. There is also a xAP homeseer setup document in this xAP library as well that was focused on 1-wire, but the same approach applies.

[codey]

thanks guys

[jsy4ncsu]

hey, thanks for all the help with this. i've got webcontrol board (PLC) set up and running with xapmcsWeb, homeseer, etc. works great on the discretes. however the temperature reading i'm getting in xapmcsWeb status page (and also homeseer) for a sensor i hooked up is whacked (reading 504144400000, the temperature icon in status is showing "??"). the direct reading off the board is working when i just go the board's webserver page, so i know it's not the board reading. i'm sure i'm doing something wrong, any ideas...?

[Michael McSharry]

Start a discussion topic in the XAP Discussions forum. Look at http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=149521. Post 5 starts the discussion on providing data to start analysis

[jsy4ncsu]

i figured out from another thread, didn't have latest version of xamcswebcontrol. updated and now temp reading working fine. now i just need to figure out out to get the closed loop control for spa. i of course have no problem buying your temperature plug-in if that's the easist/best solution but was also thinking it could be done within xamcswebcontrol. will read on it more today and try some different things out.

[Michael McSharry]

xapmcsWebControl has the closed loop thermostat control programming for the BRE from the browser interface. It does not do this for the PLC version. You can write your own closed loop control logic using PLC code and xapmcsWebControl will provide xAP access for monitoring. The WebControl is quite capable of doing basic control loops by itself.

[jsy4ncsu]

that's what i was "afraid" of. probably would have been better served getting the BREs. i need (or would like) control from HS and HSTouch. will figure something out. i tried out the temperature plug-in but i don't think it does what i need. i really need a generic closed loop control plug-in using existing devices in HS. basically i have a spa heater (controlled by discrete out on webcontrol board) that i want to turn on and maintain temperature (measured by one-wire temp sensor on webcontrol board). would like allow user to control setpoint and On/Off (mode) via HSTouch android tablet, using HS. i have everything working but this. thanks in large part to your xap tools. i'll keep plugging away.

[jsy4ncsu]

URL for a picture of my "creation"...

[Michael McSharry]

The Temperature Action event from mcsTemperature is what you are looking for this purpose. It takes a setpoint from a virtual device and controls an output discrete based upon a sensor input. There are other variations, but this is the basic Temperature Action capability of mcsTemperature. If I was designing the system I would put the inner loop control in the PLC or BRE logic and provide the setpoint via xAP interface from the HS user interface. You can do everything from Homeseer, but there are too many reasons that HS will not be 100% available for the inner loop control.

[jsy4ncsu]

thanks, as far as putting the logic in PLC i would be okay with that but i would also want to have a way to turn it off externally. in other words, don't want the logic to control spa temp running all the time. So i guess if you can provide a setpoint via xAP to webcontrol you should be able to provide some type of mode to "OFF"...? otherwise, i *think* i'm okay with controlling via HS since "spa-use" only requires short term closed loop control. that's what i was hoping mcsTemp would do, but didn't think it could...so i have hope again. i'm none too familiar with virtual devices...but easy enough to create for a user-controlled setpoint... but can mcsTemperature use a sensor temp reading from webcontrol board via xAP? i guess so from your post! i'll investigate further.

[Michael McSharry]

You can do what you want in multiple ways. mcsTemperature allows you to create a virtual device that presents to the user a dropdown of setpoints. When you create it you give it the range of and delta. You can use the webcontrol as a dump sensor/relay and put the logic in Homeseer if you desire. The safety issue is to assure that the webcontrol relay that controls your heater is not left in the ON state.

Another attractive architecture is do the control logic in HS and have PLC code in webcontrol that monitors for a max temperature and a max on time duration and when those occur override the HS control to turn off the heater.

[jsy4ncsu]

trying to get there using mcstemp...but this thing is now just locking me up. getting a lot of 11/25/2011 1:58:20 PM - mcsTemperature - Maximum simultaneous ASP requests now = 5
messages and everything slow, menus not working, etc. also stuck with chartdirector download message window that will not go away...only way to get out of it is to disable temp plug-in and stop/restart HS. perhaps windows 7 related issues, i had to install using administrator privileges to get homeseer to even load.

[jsy4ncsu]

also getting this error over and over. haven't even really tried to do anything much yet. it appears to be related to trying to pull up the config interface, moving around from menu to menu...

11/25/2011 2:05:32 PM - mcsTemperature - TemperatureASP 10 second Timeout On Pending ASP Request with pending level 3

[jsy4ncsu]

and problems magically went away once the chartdirector download message finally went away. i'll worry about getting that installed later if needed. for now, i'm able to navigate menus again.