xAP for HouseBot - and can I programatically create devices

roussell · Post by **roussell** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 1:36 pm

I’d love to be a guinea pig for some of this or help anyway I could. I have dreams of integrating Zoneminder into Housebot using xAP/xPL. xAP integration would open up other areas for media control as well.

Terry

erspearson · Post by **erspearson** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:09 pm

Great, you're signed up as a beta tester!

dlmorgan999 · Post by **dlmorgan999** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:47 pm

I just realized that the squeezebox (network audio player) supports xPL. I would love to be able to control it this way. I'm not sure if/how this relates to xAP but if your plugin will support this Ill be happy to help test it too. If not then maybe your plugin could easily be upgraded to include support for xPL?

-- Dave

erspearson · Post by **erspearson** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:32 pm

By strange coincidence I'm writing a xAP plugin for SlimServer in parallel with the xAP HouseBot plugin since I want to control SlimServer from HouseBot too! (but that project is not as near completion as HouseBot at the moment).

Edward

roussell · Post by **roussell** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:55 pm

Any update on this?

Terry

erspearson · Post by **erspearson** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:47 am

Progress. Yes and No. The plugin for SlimServer overtook the HouseBot plugin and turned out to be a lengthy piece of work. That is available from the SlimDevices site now. But I've not progressed with the HouseBot plug-in to date. Still plan too though.

Edward

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:16 am

Just reviving this thread... and there may be some news soon

A couple of Q's Scott.

We are seeing some issues at the moment with memory and the plugin which is bringing HouseBot down. Once it's happened then in a few cases we can't relaunch HB as the DB seems corrupted - replacing it with a fresh copy works but is a right PITA. Any thoughts here ? Have perused the DB and can't see anything obvious. I realise almost anything could be corrupted with a rampant array..

There are some 'unable to create device' and other generic messages in the onscreen startup log but they often don't say which device has an issue and they disappear almost instantly with the crash - is there a possibility of adding an identifier. It appears HB doesn't get far enough to actually write a log to disk in this situation either.

There is no restriction on the number of devices in HB is there ? - maybe just by coincidence we seem to hit issues at 256 devices....

Kevin

Post by **ScottBot** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:35 pm

The "unable to create device message" can be the result of a corrupt database, or at least something wrong in the DB. If it's coming from your plugin, then there could actually be something pragmatically wrong. Most of the error messages do give more info on which device is the issue. If you can get me the exact messages, I may be able to find out more (I know it's tricky if you don't see the message for long). Typically these types of error point to missing properties in the DB that the plugin is expecting.

Also, if HB is crashing, it should create a *.dmp file in the HouseBot\Dump directory. If you send me the latest DMP file, it may contains something more helpful.

And lastly, if you still can nail it down, you can send me your DB, and maybe I can duplicate it here running in a debugger.

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:53 am

Be back in touch shortly - some plugin maintenance that E's working on and if the issue persists I'll send you the extra info....

K

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:14 am

Edwards making great progress :-)

One thing - the device list can be pretty large now in a xAP environment. Is there any abilty to create a hierarchical list here , like several nested folders, where devices can be grouped in some fashion and expanded, maybe multilevel ? Often a single xAP device has many endpoints. You might have a dozen different devices but some are divided by functionality and then within a function some have 256 or more endpoints (eg X10 or C-Bus) , each one of which currently is one device in HB.

The default xAP device names can become quite long and often the first portion of the name is identical, the difference only being at the end of the name. This has an awkward effect in the property editor when you are selecting a device - as the list if fixed width and truncates the name before the end ... so you cant tell which you are selecting. Renaming them all is one option I guess but a longer field or resizeable dialog here would be most useful .

Kevin

Post by **ScottBot** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 1:53 pm

CouchPotatoe wrote:...Is there any abilty to create a hierarchical list here , like several nested folders, where devices can be grouped in some fashion and expanded, maybe multilevel ?

If you right mouse click on the Device folder in the main tree view, you can select "Create New Group" to create a nested folder. Devices can be added to that group by moving them around by clicking the "Group" button on the main Device property view. You can then add nested folder to the new folder creating more than one level.

The default xAP device names can become quite long and often the first portion of the name is identical, the difference only being at the end of the name. This has an awkward effect in the property editor when you are selecting a device - as the list if fixed width and truncates the name before the end ... so you cant tell which you are selecting. Renaming them all is one option I guess but a longer field or resizeable dialog here would be most useful .

Where exactly are you referring to when you say "Property Editor"? The Property Manager will scroll with long property names, so I'm thinking you are looking at something else.

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 9:38 pm

ScottBot wrote:
CouchPotatoe wrote:...Is there any abilty to create a hierarchical list here , like several nested folders, where devices can be grouped in some fashion and expanded, maybe multilevel ?
If you right mouse click on the Device folder in the main tree view, you can select "Create New Group" to create a nested folder. Devices can be added to that group by moving them around by clicking the "Group" button on the main Device property view. You can then add nested folder to the new folder creating more than one level.

Ahh - well this is almost ideal - sorry I'm asking some questions here without being the programmer involved. When we create devices on the fly from the incoming xAP messages can this device hierarchy be built and managed / named programatically ?

The default xAP device names can become quite long and often the first portion of the name is identical, the difference only being at the end of the name. This has an awkward effect in the property editor when you are selecting a device - as the list if fixed width and truncates the name before the end ... so you cant tell which you are selecting. Renaming them all is one option I guess but a longer field or resizeable dialog here would be most useful .
Where exactly are you referring to when you say "Property Editor"? The Property Manager will scroll with long property names, so I'm thinking you are looking at something else.

I was meaning in say a 'Property Label 'properties (right click on a control) where you get a popup list of the device names - within this we're overflowing the width.... at initial creation it's much longer but if you edit it later its narrower.

K

Post by **ScottBot** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 10:27 pm

The Hardware Interface API for creating devices does not allow you to specify a group, so they are all created in the root. I could probably make a server change that you allow you to prefix the Device Description with a group name without having to change the API. Let me know if that would help, but it would have to be in the next version.

So the Property name width issue you are seeing is in the combo boxes? That's a bit harder to resolve, since you can't really have horizontal scroll bars on a combo box. I will make the combos wider where possible in the next release, but they will still have a limit.

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:03 am

I think it would be a useful addition Scott , as xAP can create literally hundreds of devices and the current mechanism, to move things is a little ardous on this number. A way to edit the group for a number of devices at once would perhaps help here too. (shift/ctrl click type thing)

However - I've hit a problem - I spent quite a while yesterday creating and moving nearly 1000 devices into groups and some theme work - all worked nicely - and then I quit and restarted and HB wont start - no errors - or poss some very fast at the end. It doesn't crash - it just doesn't start.

So I started with a fresh DB and let it recognise my xAP devices, restarted after this and all was fine. Then I created a couple of hierarchical groups and moved half a dozen devices , restarted and I get the immediate quit on start and definitely no errors shown. Is this pointing to a plugin issue ?

Does the DB diagnostic tool that you released work on V3 now I wonder ?

Kevin

CouchPotatoe · Post by **CouchPotatoe** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:10 am

Looks like it is a plugin issue - as soon as I move a device into a group then HouseBot wont startup. However moving a non xAP device it works fine .

K

xAP for HouseBot - and can I programatically create devices

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