Could the UPB plugin support multiple PIMs?

[DC]

Reading Michael's post about serial to IP converters causes me to think that if the UPB plugin supported multiple PIMs, with the capability to send the same UPB command to all of them with a user defined delay (1 sec, 10 ms, etc) that could be very useful. I could put PIMs in various areas of my house and send the command to each one by LAN wiring. If a device receives a command 2 or 3 times, would that cause any problems?

[jstaab]

I wouldn't think there would be any problems. My light doesn't seem to have any issues if I send to sequentials ONs to it. Or even two DIMS in a row, nothing really happens besides what I expect to happen. However, technically, you really shouldn't need multiple PIMs with UPB. However, according to some recent posts, I guess some people are having issues. I guess I've been lucky so far. I've place in PIM in the worse place possible and it's working perfect and hasn't missed a single command. However, I haven't ran into the mulitiple phase issue yet. If you used xapmcsUPB and had PCs scattered around the house, you could have a PIM on each PC. I suppse you MIGHT slow things down though by the extra traffic when you multiple events triggered back to back.

[Michael McSharry]

If I was going to run multiple PIMs I would likely put each PIM behind a Lantronix EPS and run multiple copies of the software from the same PC. Even if I had multiple computers available I would still do it from a single one for ease of configuration management.

If you used used multiple PIM for redundancy rather than coverage then use of multiple PCs would be the natural approach

[Oman]

Actually there is a way to do this built-into the UPB protocol. It has message sequence support as well as repeater support. I think the PIM would have to be in pulse mode because the firmware for message mode does not support the repeater pulse bits.

Using these built-in methods the packets could originate at different points on the network and the receiving device would not "act twice" as they would see it as repeats of the same message.

The UPB repeaters are designed to do this themselves. As far as I know they are not commonly available.

If I was going to run multiple PIMs I would likely put each PIM behind a Lantronix EPS and run multiple copies of the software from the same PC. Even if I had multiple computers available I would still do it from a single one for ease of configuration management.

If you used used multiple PIM for redundancy rather than coverage then use of multiple PCs would be the natural approach