HouseBot

Just bought the ACT ZCU010 USB but I can not enable it in Housebot. I have not installed any drivers. Where can I find the latest ones?

The drivers should come with the unit. ACT used to supply the from the web site also, but the old link that I had doesn't work any more.

Try here:

http://forums.controlthink.com/457/ShowPost.aspx

Or here:

http://www.act-solutions.com/HomePro.htm

Osler

I downloaded the one from act solutions, here, http://www.act-solutions.com/HomePro.htm.
It says the drives are for developers only and the are are two drivers: Virtual Com Port (VCP) driver and D2XXDirect Drivers. I used the direct ones and they seem to be working. I hope they are the correct ones.

Has anybody tried ACT's new USB interface (ZCS101) with HouseBot? Is it supported at all?

Scott, browsing the posts I found your concerns about z-wave not really being two way. It was true in the past but they are moving forward. The new ACT wall switches can be set to automatically update the PC interface whenever operated manually or by a remote. It would be nice to have that feature in HouseBot.

Not this next release, but the one after that, I plan on focusing on Z-Wave improvements and device support. I'd love to get the 2-way functionality working.

Until then .. .

Can you let me know if there is any chance to use the current Z-Wave USB plugin with ACT's new ZCZ101 interface. Unfortunately this interface comes with a new driver

http://www.act-solutions.com/pdfs/HomeP ... 051807.zip

that only allows the USB interface to appear as a virtual COM port.

Trying to start Housebot with this new driver causes an "Error initializing USD interface" at startup.

Currently I'm using ACT's old ZCS000/ZCS001 serial interface but since it is not supported by HouseBot I monitored what seial commands are used and created a hardware interface in HouseBot. Unfortunately the last byte of each command is some kind of a CRC byte that I haven't been able to figure it out so I just can't build commands on the fly. I must store a different serial command for every single light level for every unit. It's is a minimum of 1000 separate commands for only 10 units. Besides I can't use variable substitution, etc.

If somebody might have figured out how to get the last byte pls share it with me.

Thanks,

"Can you let me know if there is any chance to use the current Z-Wave USB plugin with ACT's new ZCZ101 interface"

Sorry I meant current HouseBot plugin.

In the meantime I found that the new ACT USB unit (ZCU101) understands the same serial command set -sent out on the virtual COM port after the driver installed- that I figured out for the old RS232 model (ZCS000).

If the old USB (ZCU000) unit also worked the same way using a serial/USB conversion than it would mean that it uses the same protocol as well.

This would mean that

1., I might be able to use my ZCS000- RS232 unit with the current HouseBot plugin if I somehow could connect it to USB? Or it would not take too much to modify the plugin to send out the same commands via RS232 instead of USB.

2., The new ZCU101 could also be supported -exept the new features of course- by the current HouseBot plugin if... if what?

Sorry I'm not too familiar with how an USB driver works I'm just brainstorming myself. However most companies who came out with an USB interface and used RS232 before use a USB/RS232 converter in the new device.

tom-tom wrote:"Can you let me know if there is any chance to use the current Z-Wave USB plugin with ACT's new ZCZ101 interface"

Sorry I meant current HouseBot plugin.

Not as far as I know. Maybe there's some creative way to get it to work. The current USB Z-Wave plugin talks to the FTDI driver/dll to convert the Z-Wave serial API to USB protocol.

In the meantime I found that the new ACT USB unit (ZCU101) understands the same serial command set -sent out on the virtual COM port after the driver installed- that I figured out for the old RS232 model (ZCS000).

If the old USB (ZCU000) unit also worked the same way using a serial/USB conversion than it would mean that it uses the same protocol as well.

Ultimately, all of the Z-Wave computer interfaces use the same Z-wave chips and support the same protocol. It's a serial based protocol that either flows as-is to a serial interface (which unfortunately HouseBot doesn't support at the time) or gets converted to USB through some Serial->USB virtual com port or through a serial->usb layer of some kind.

1., I might be able to use my ZCS000- RS232 unit with the current HouseBot plugin if I somehow could connect it to USB? Or it would not take too much to modify the plugin to send out the same commands via RS232 instead of USB.

Really not sure whether this would work or not. Changing the plugin to also support serial is something that is planned for the Z-Wave release I mentioned before. I don't think it will be too much to support both USB and serial, but it won't make it into the current release (not to mention I don't even have one of the new ZCU/S devices).

2., The new ZCU101 could also be supported -exept the new features of course- by the current HouseBot plugin if... if what?

I'm not sure what the differences is with the new ZCU devices compared to the old USB devices. Seems that it should be about the same, but if it doesn't use the FTDI chip it may not work as is.