HouseBot

as the subject says...



I have tried everything I can think of. I'm using the cm11 interface.

Mack,



I'm not exactly sure how you are trying to dim the lamp, so I'll just give some general information about X10 dimming.



HouseBot Devices support two types of dimming. Both are considered 'direct dimming' because the lamp will jump directly to the dim level specified. One type is Leviton dimming. Leviton dimming will only work with Leviton switches. The other type is preset dimming and will only work on switches that support preset dimming (there aren't many... I think PCS switches do).



The worst and most available type of dimming is to send the incremental Dim and Bright X10 commands. I did not implement this functionallity in the HB Devices (well actually I did, but pulled it out) because it gets impossible to manage when the switch is controlled by both HB and manually. This is due to the fact the the current Dim level is unknown by HB when changed manually.



However, it is still possible to send X10 Dim and Bright commands with HB. You have to use the 'X10 Controller' Device. Using this Device to send a single Dim command to a switch set at A:1 can be done by setting the 'Composite Property' to A:1:Dim:1 To send 5 Bright commands to A:1 the Composite Property would be A:1:Bright:5



Hope this helps,

Scott

Scott I believe the command structure is A;1;Bright;5 , not A:1:Bright:5. At least the help file says so and it works.

Btw, If I want to use X10 remotes on a different housecode as the dimmers etc to start scenes, how do I set it up? I tried to make an x10 controller with composite property B;1;On and create a task which is executed when the controller's property = eq B;1;On. Made sense to me but no go. Any tips?



John

John,



Thanks for the correction. Actually you can use any of these characters as delimiters .;,-. But you can't use a colon (bad guess on my part).



Here's how to use the X10 Controller to trigger a scene.

• 1) Create a single X10 Controller Device. This Device will be used to sense all X10 activity. It is not married to a particular house code and unit code.
  2) Create a Task that has a condition that will test the Composite Property of the X10 Controller for the House Code/Unit Code/Command that you want to activate the scene.
  3) For the actions in the Task you would setup the scene (obviously).

The thing to remember is that the single X10 Controller will monitory ALL X10 activity. It can also be used to send ANY X10 command to any House Code or Unit Code. You could use a single X10 Controller Device to run all of the X10 needs of the system, but it wouldn't be my suggestion.



Scott

thanks, that works!

Also thanks for such a powerful free program. I have much to learn about it though.

Scott, thanks for the info, I was on the right path , but for some reason it didn't work. It does now though. I noticed that it takes very long before the x10 trigger is detected by housebot (log window of device). It takes about 6 seconds after the trigger (RF) to get detected by housebot and perform the task. Does the Powerline interface (EUROPEAN CM11)cause this delay or is there some other reason for it.? It doesn't matter much if you have some sort of scene (start movie) in which a lot of actions have to be taken, because you can time them, but for "immediate" control 6 seconds is a long tiime to wait



John

John,



X10 is notoriously slow. In general, it takes about 1/2 second for a transmission to complete. Depending on how many other links are in the transmission path, it can take a while.



For example, your RF motion detector sends to the RF base unit (this is typically very fast). The base unit must send over the power line (1/2 sec). If going between phases in home add another 1/2 second (at least). The X10 receive unit will transmit the code and send it to HB. HB then responds by sending other X10 commands (1/2 second each + more time if going between phases).



One thing I did to speed this up in my house was to use the X10 MR26a instead of a standard X10 RF base unit. HB has an interface for the MR26a. It eliminates one of the legs of the X10 journey.



Scott

Boris wrote:Scott, thanks for the info, I was on the right path , but for some reason it didn't work. It does now though. I noticed that it takes very long before the x10 trigger is detected by housebot (log window of device). It takes about 6 seconds after the trigger (RF) to get detected by housebot and perform the task. Does the Powerline interface (EUROPEAN CM11)cause this delay or is there some other reason for it.? It doesn't matter much if you have some sort of scene (start movie) in which a lot of actions have to be taken, because you can time them, but for "immediate" control 6 seconds is a long tiime to wait

John

Hi Scott, I have a one phase system. It takes a little more than half a second (50Hz) for the lights to reacton the rf command, which is ok. I put the transceiver directly on the same mains connection as the cm11. That didn't improve things. I installed Activehome to see if stausfeedback is just as slow here. In activehome it took exactly one extra cycle to get statusfeedback, so this means that there is nothing wrong with my CM11. COuld it be that the protocol you use for the CM11 is having problems to interprete stausfeedback from the powerline interface? Maybe just for the european version?



John

John,



If you are seeing fast(er) responses with ActiveHome, it certainly seems like a problem related to the HouseBot plugin. I don't think there is anything different about the european CM11 that would make a difference, but I've certainly never tested it myself.



If you turn on some tracing, it might give some clues as to what is going on. Try doing this:

• 1) From the main menu select "Settings/Tracing..."
  2) Click the "Advanced" button in the corner of the Tracing dialog.
  3) Select your CM11 a (what ever name you gave it) in the list and check the "Window" checkbox. You can also check the "File" checkbox and enter a file name if you want to send it to me.
  4) Dismiss all dialogs and try the X10 reception again. You can monitor the trace activity from the "Logging/System Log" area in the main tree view.
  5) When finished, turn off the tracing by repeating these steps but remove the checks from the checkboxes.

Scott

Scott, I've put tracing on. If I send a A3 on with rf remote I get (after 5 sec) Dimmer3, powerstate has changes to on, X10 remote, COmposite property has changed to a;3;On, Error Log X10 remote, Composite Property has changed to a;3;on. If I send the same command again, I only get the first line, since staus stays the same. IF I send a dim or bright command it is almost as " fast"as in activehome if I send them alternately. If I try to send 2 dim or bright commands after each other, there is no response in the trace window



John

John,



I've looked into this a little deeper. I too am seeing the delays with the CM11a that you are seeing.



If I run a serial port monitor, I can see that the CM11a is delaying before notifying HouseBot of the X10 reception. I have also verified this same delayed behavior using ActiveHome. I'm not sure how you were able to successfully get ActiveHome to respond faster.



I was reading some posts about similar complaints on the CM11a. It was suggested that the CM11a waits for a period of quiet time on the powerline after it receives before notifying the host.



Scott

Scott, Ididn.t do anything special. Just did a fresh activehome installl and used the dimmer and appliance module that come up. Which serial monitor are you using?



John

The serial monitor I use is "PortMon". You can download it for free at http://www.sysinternals.com.



Scott

FYI, on my setup (CM11a,) I can only issue these commands:



A;1;Bright

A;1;Dim



I ended up having to get a lamp in the same room as my computer to just play with different variations on the commands to figure this out! The multiple (A;1;Bright;3) doesn't work for me.



I agree that X10 dimming is sucky at best. The way I get around the "bloom" effect when you issue a "Dim" command is by pre-setting the light I want to change at a certain time. I have a task that basically looks like this: (My X10 controller name is "MegaWidget®!")




So, my wish for the next iteration of HouseBot is to have a "Duplicate Action" button added to the Tasks setup page.



With these commands, the light is Power State = "On," but dimmed to black. As long as I don't send it any On or Off commands, and as long as my automatic commands send a symmetrical number of "Dim"s and "Bright"s, I know that it's dimmed to black.



Mine is triggered by a motion detector, but it would be pretty simple to set up tasks in HB to create a virtual dim switch. For instance, my light is on L4 - you could set up "M4 On" as a task that sends seven Brights to L4 and "M4 Off" as a task that sends seven Dims.

Redbeard25 wrote:So, my wish for the next iteration of HouseBot is to have a "Duplicate Action" button added to the Tasks setup page.

There were some other items related to Tasks on the list for the next update, so I'll add you suggestion.



Thanks,

Scott