xAP, Squeezebox and Idratek

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  • Paul_B
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jul 2006
    • 608

    xAP, Squeezebox and Idratek

    With the new release of Ed's plugin for xAP / Squeezebox has anyone played with interfacing this in to Cortex? I know Cortex has native support for Squeezebox but I always wanted to customise it which isn't really possible
  • Kevin
    Moderator
    • Jan 2004
    • 558

    #2
    One of the great aspects of the work Idratek have done with xAP is that they can support all xAP schema and so the SqueezeCentre plugin - which uses 3 different xAP schema can be integrated in many ways.

    You can easily control transport states (play, stop, pause etc) and power on/off volume and you can send display messages to the screens of the players which is really neat. The display mechanism is actually very powerful in that it has message priorities and durations and a queue which correctly suspends and resumes messages if higher priority ones arrive.

    Also if interest all the IR key button presses of the remote are reported via xAP (as well as some other standard IR formats) so you could uses this to trigger some Cortex actions. This is no where near as capable as the IDRANet IR receivers though .. and has no learn ability.

    On the actual music content - all of this information is provided , and controllable via xAP but I have yet to investigate how to use/display textual data within Cortex - I think it's possible but I haven't done it.

    I also have this same need with some callerID information that my xAP devices provide so I need to investigate this. I suspect CID is more involved though as the telephony aspect of Cortex is an inbuilt function so I maybe can't use it with a xAP CID device.

    Of course you can use one of the touch screen front ends with Cortex via xAP - eg HouseBot , xAP Floorplan, xAP Desktop or xLobby - - and these are much better at handling things like cover art and lists of information (tracks/albums) etc

    K

    Comment

    • Paul_B
      Automated Home Legend
      • Jul 2006
      • 608

      #3
      Thanks Kevin, for now I was thinking about using the display to send messages. For example Cortex detects the washing machine has finished (drop in current for length of time) then sends a message to the Squeezebox with an appropriate message

      Comment

      • Kevin
        Moderator
        • Jan 2004
        • 558

        #4
        Yes - you can do that with the existing plugin. You would create a xAP schema for each different message - and then just trigger the message to be sent at the appropriate time, presumably derived from some Cortex connection.

        Kevin

        Comment

        • Paul_B
          Automated Home Legend
          • Jul 2006
          • 608

          #5
          Okay I'm being lazy would this be covered with the dcumentation of the new xAP / SB plugin?

          Comment

          • Kevin
            Moderator
            • Jan 2004
            • 558

            #6
            Yes ;-) - in section 4.7

            The SqueezeCentre conduit is well documented at

            and Cortex has good inbuilt documentation on the xAP object... but if you're stuck just ask away ..

            Here is the schema that you will be constructing .. to send via xAP - note that all the lines in [] are optional - so you could just send

            {
            ...
            Class=Message.Display
            ....
            Target=<address of player you want to display the message on>
            }
            Display.text
            {
            Line1=Message from Cortex
            }

            Full version....

            Display.Text
            {
            Line1=<message text line>
            [Line2=<message text line>]
            [Line3=<message text line>]
            [Line4=<message text line>]
            [Line5=<message text line>]
            [Line6=<message text line>]
            [Line7=<message text line>]
            [Line8=<message text line>]
            [Line9=<message text line>]
            [Duration=<seconds>]
            [TTL=<seconds>]
            [Align1=(left|centre|center)]
            [Align2=(left|centre|center)]
            [Type=(Queue|Immediate|Permanent)]
            [Tag=<messageid>]
            [Brightness=(PowerOn|PowerOff|Idle|Off|Dimmest|Dim| Bright|Brightest|0|1|2|3|4)]
            [Size=(Small|Medium|Large|s|m|l)]
            [Priority=<integer>]
            [Screen=(1|2)]
            }
            Last edited by Kevin; 18 September 2008, 12:30 PM.

            Comment

            • Paul_B
              Automated Home Legend
              • Jul 2006
              • 608

              #7
              I'll have to give this a play. Need to upgarde my Cortex license to include the HA server that supports xAP functionallity.

              Kevin, do you have a favourite list of xAP applications?

              Comment

              • Kevin
                Moderator
                • Jan 2004
                • 558

                #8
                Originally posted by Paul_B View Post
                Kevin, do you have a favourite list of xAP applications?
                There's a lot of xAP (Windows) applications listed here

                and also take a look at the mi4 and mcs website. On the latter (HomeSeer) one make sure you display all messages from beginning (not messages in last n months)


                Library area for plug-in nodes. Use the discussion area to discuss these - posting here is only allowed by the moderator.


                from my own perspective - I am preferring to use embedded xAP devices and so use a number of standalone devices , xAP Netiom (general I/O) , OPNOne (1-wire) along with C-Bus and HomeVision via my xAP gateway - and then some key applications like

                xAPTel (CallerID - also available as embedded device)
                xAP SwitchBoard (Call logger and contacts DB - links to Outlook)
                xAP Floorplan (xAP scripting and web interface)
                xAP Weather
                xAP TV
                xAP News
                xAP Ping (lets me know if any devices go AWOL)
                xAP Desktop (popup widgets - takes a bit of getting to know)
                xAP display apps for Roku/Slim/Tivo
                xAP Speech
                HouseBot* - great for touch screen front ends
                xAP audio schema (for controlling mp3 devices)
                xAPower (Current Cost device attachment)
                xAPmcsRF (W800i/RFXCom device)

                * all free except this one

                K

                Comment

                • Paul_B
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Jul 2006
                  • 608

                  #9
                  I must admit I am a bit confused as to where to start and what to do. I have xAP enabled now via the HA Server Object in Cortex and have xAP enabled a Humidity sensor. I have also added the Squeezecenter xAP plugin and downloaded the xfx viewer from Ed's site.

                  So I can see the xAP heartbeat coming out of Cortex and player information on the Squeeze center and Squeezebox. But I don't see any information coming out of the humidity sensor. What have I done wrong / not done?

                  Paul

                  Comment

                  • wywywywy
                    Automated Home Sr Member
                    • Dec 2005
                    • 86

                    #10
                    Hi. What is this "xAPower"? I can't see it on the xAP website? Thanks.

                    Comment

                    • Kevin
                      Moderator
                      • Jan 2004
                      • 558

                      #11
                      Originally posted by wywywywy View Post
                      Hi. What is this "xAPower"? I can't see it on the xAP website? Thanks.
                      xAPPower is a half finished bit of code of mine that connects the 'Current Cost' electricity consumption monitoring devices to xAP.



                      You need the specific version (1.07) of the display device that reports the historic data out of the serial port - along with their serial cable. If you have their other version which was given away by various utility companies you can just buy one of these and a cable


                      I got diverted from the application by other things but it mostly works - and the source code is available in VB6. It needs a bit of generalisation ie configurable serial ports etc...

                      K

                      Comment

                      • Kevin
                        Moderator
                        • Jan 2004
                        • 558

                        #12
                        Originally posted by Paul_B View Post
                        I don't see any information coming out of the humidity sensor. What have I done wrong / not done?

                        Paul
                        Well it sounds like everything is set up correctly if you see all the SqueezeCentre messages on xAP. With regard to the humidity sensor all you have to do is right click on the humidty sensor and select 'Automation Networks' and tick the 'enabled' box in the xAP schemas tab . Now whenever the value of the humidty sensor changes it will send a xAP event message.

                        xap-header
                        {
                        v=13
                        hop=1
                        uid=FF.1007:0083
                        class=xAPBSC.event
                        source=Idratek.Cortex.SERVER:World.Outside.Outside Humidity
                        }
                        input.state
                        {
                        State=On
                        Text=77.30
                        }

                        You can set up a custom name should you wish but you don't really need to do that. The sensor does need to change value to originate a message.

                        Worth pointing out that the humidity sensor reports an 'input.state' which means that it is an input only device within Cortex. If you xAP enable something that is an output eg a dimmer or relay then it will report an 'output.state' and will be controllable from xAP - ie you can send xAPBSC.cmd messages to it and it will change state accordingly. Both input and output devices can be queried from xAP.

                        Cheers Kevin

                        Comment

                        • Paul_B
                          Automated Home Legend
                          • Jul 2006
                          • 608

                          #13
                          It looks as though after enabling a device for HA in Cortex (after getting the license upgrade from Idratek), that the Idratek Network needs to be restarted on Cortex. After stopping and starting the IdraNET from Cortex all is good and I can see xAP entries in the real time communication Window in Cortex

                          I can now see messages coming out of Cortex for HA enabled devices with Ed's xFx Viewer as well

                          Paul

                          Comment

                          • Kevin
                            Moderator
                            • Jan 2004
                            • 558

                            #14
                            Originally posted by Kevin View Post
                            xAPPower is a half finished bit of code of mine
                            K
                            It looks like the other Kevin also has a near finished xAP connector for the Current Cost devices (just entering beta) that has nice web based graphing and RSS feeds - here's a snippet from his post to the xAP Automation list that shows the featurelist.

                            Because it supports BSC some integration with Cortex should be possible although probably not via the power reporting / graphing object

                            K

                            KevinT wrote...

                            Runs as a tray icon under windows
                            Supports xAP BSC and xap-temperature
                            Hourly and daily trend graphs for all 4 channels
                            Collects one minute data into daily csv log files
                            Utilises the xAPIntranet ocx web server
                            Uses the xAPIntranet tabbed web page interface, 9 tabs/pages
                            Has a summary page showing current energy used and the energy used
                            and costs for the last day, week and month
                            Supports xAPIntranet Groups
                            Uses Google chart api for month and annual graphs
                            Has 4 RSS feeds

                            You can see what I have so far here

                            Comment

                            • Paul_B
                              Automated Home Legend
                              • Jul 2006
                              • 608

                              #15
                              Now that I have myxAP messages coming out of Cortex how can I act upon them? Do I need an additional application?

                              For example, if I xAP enabled the outside temperature sensor and it goes below 10 degrees how could I send an xAP message to the Squeezebox plug-in so that a message appears on my SB devices to say something "Risk of ground frost"?

                              Paul

                              Comment

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