Jon00 Mini-Bee & Relay-Bee Home Automation Controllers

[jon00]

The supplied DLL only supports one board. There is another DLL that can be used that does support multiple boards.

I did start to write an alternative which will support multiple mini-bee boards. I'm not sure how far I got with this so would have to take a look. I currently only have one board so may be difficult to test.

[jon00]

since MaxiBees are not available, how hard would it be to allow multiple MiniBees to work with this plugin?

I need at least 20 outputs.

I've just taken a look at this. I do not think it would take too much effort in getting this functional as much of the work was done (in 2009!) before I stopped for some reason.

Is there demand for a multiple board version?

[prsmith777]

Ive had contact with the Maxi-Bee folks and they are considering doing a short run of the MaxiBee. They arent firm yet on when the new version is coming.
I would not have much interest in a multiboard minibee if this were to happen.

[Emotion]

Excellent scripts and documentation, very easy to follow and worked first time - thank you!

[jon00]

Thanks!

[Bulletcom]

I've just taken a look at this. I do not think it would take too much effort in getting this functional as much of the work was done (in 2009!) before I stopped for some reason.

Is there demand for a multiple board version?

Did you pursue this any further, Jon? I'm successfully using a Minibee with your script but am just about to need another set of relays in a different part of the house and being able to add this onto my system would be really useful.

Regards

David

[jon00]

I did, however the multi-board dll provided was buggy and consistantly crashed unless you limited switching to 1 change per second or more. I then abandoned it.

[Jakob.Sand]

ok - I would also enjoy being able to have mulltiple boards.

I did, however the multi-board dll provided was buggy and consistantly crashed unless you limited switching to 1 change per second or more. I then abandoned it.

[Uncle Michael]

Actuation failure puzzle

Jon,
I have a puzzle. Most of my relay events work flawlessly, but recently some occasionally fail to actuate the relay. I've attached an example screen shot. If I press the Run button the relays actuate every time, but if the normal trigger is used, or if the event is called as a Run Event action from another event, the relays sometimes do not actually activate - even though the HS log indicates they were sent instructions as normal. Any ideas?

[jon00]

Sorry Mike, I don't.

Does it work if you use immediate script commands to operate the relays via a hs.runex command?

i.e. something like (this assumes output 1):

&hs.Runex "MiniBee.vben ","Main","1-1"

and

&hs.Runex "MiniBee.vben ","Main","1-0"

[Uncle Michael]

I haven't tried that in this case, but I've certainly used those commands successfully in the past. Unfortunately, it only fails some of the time so it takes some time to troubleshoot.

What I'm now suspecting is that there is a conflict in execution. The offending event is one of two events with the same trigger. One event has a condition and one doesn't.

I've added a delay in execution of the actions of the event with the condition so they occur after the relay operation, and will monitor it to see if I have any more failures. So far it's been working.

3/29: After a week I have not seen any more failures, so I am assuming that the problem was a conflict caused by two events executing simultaneously. Somehow the message to the relay did not get through even though it appeared to execute normally in the HS log and no errors were generated.

[Uncle Michael]

Possible Handle leak

I think I have discovered a minor handle leak.

Recently I began to see my HS Handles increasing significantly. After some investigation I believe I have tracked down the sources. (There were at least two.) In both cases, the leak was in scripts that had performed without issue for some time.

In the case of the MiniBee, I had a recurring script that checked a condition, if the condition was true it would turn on a relay, if false it would turn it off. As a consequence, it was sending repeated 'Off' commands each time the script ran if the condition was false, and similarly, repeated 'On' commands if the condition was true. Disabling that event significantly reduced my handle leak.

I now also check the state of the relay, so I do not send a command if the relay is already in the proper state. That has effectively removed this source of my leak. I assume there is an unrecovered handle created each time a command is sent to the relay, but I have no way to confirm that. It's probably only a minor leak source under most circumstances, and it does not seem to be causing me any problems now. I'm mentioning it in case others encounter the same issue.

The remaining puzzle piece is the reason the leaks suddenly appeared. I assume it was an update to WinXP, but I really don't know.

[jon00]

Mike,

It could be the mb.dll supplied with the board may have a leak now with the Windows update?

Do you see an increase in Handles when you press the control buttons on the device?

[Uncle Michael]

Do you see an increase in Handles when you press the control buttons on the device?

Not sure what you mean. I'm actually using the RelayBee with the MiniBee script. I don't think there are any control buttons.

[Autiger1993]

Output code for relay bee

I am trying to get some code working to allow my VBA program to switch a light on on my relay bee. Can someone give me some recommendations on my code below? The compiler states the declare function needs to be after the End Sub statement, but it still doesn't work when I move it. I pulled the following statements from the relay bee website and manuals such as:

declare function
NumBoards = InitBee()
SetOutputs (0) 'All outputs are set to off.Here is the code:

The programs on the website and the manual are not that easy to follow, so can someone please help me?

Private Sub RelayBee()

'Get input from the user
Declare Function InitMbee Lib "c:\mb.dll" () As Boolean

Declare Function SetOutputs Lib "c:\mb.dll" (ByVal Outputs As Integer) As Boolean

Dim NumBoards As Integer

NumBoards = InitBee()

Dim rb As Integer

rb = InputBox("Do you want it to turn on, enter 1, or stay off ,enter 0")


'initialise the Mini-Bee USB comms

If (rb = 1) Then

SetOutputs (1) ' bit 1 is on to turn on output 1

ElseIf (rb = 0) Then

SetOutputs (0) 'All outputs are set to off.

End If


End Sub