xAP Flash nee Joggler beta 5

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  • Kevin
    Moderator
    • Jan 2004
    • 558

    Originally posted by Digizz View Post
    Is it just the standard sliders that can be coloured or will the popup sliders work in the same way? I'm guessing not?
    ATM it's only the embedded sliders - and only the 'sleek' style within that.

    K

    Comment

    • Kevin
      Moderator
      • Jan 2004
      • 558

      Originally posted by SiliconPixel View Post
      How does the password tag work?
      <snip>
      ....when I go to it, I don't get asked for a password.
      It has to be on the Joggler as it calls a Joggler specific API but your XML is correct , the <opacity> tag is now <alpha> though..

      Just tried it and it looks like it's got broken along the way.

      I'll leave this, and the parent tag explanation to Martyn..

      K

      Comment

      • Kevin
        Moderator
        • Jan 2004
        • 558

        beta 5 general release update

        I do apologise for the tardiness in the beta 5 release.

        The feedback on the existing beta 5 has not picked up too many issues and they were fixed in the minor rev updates (except passwords ..which we have now fixed) . However Martyn and myself keep finding the odd thing we need to tweak so I'm guessing we need more beta testers to pick these things up.

        We've also been adding a few new things and in doing that have moved from the stability of that pre beta 5 introducing some work in progress code and until we get back to a stable build it won't be released. We're not far off but there are some loose ends still. One significant change to the code is causing me a real headache on the Joggler (works fine on a PC) and I need to address that. Martyn had another similar issue but he's now fixed that.

        Coordinating multiple contributors into one build is more awkward than I anticipated - getting everyone in synch at the same time.

        Some documentation still to do (yawn - so boring) as things have changed quite a bit . As we will have quite a few new users trying the next beta I need to improve the docs and I do hope that everyone will chirp in and help them with their questions on this forum. There's likely to be a few xAP based questions too.

        Real soon now... Kevin

        Comment

        • BodgeIT
          Automated Home Sr Member
          • Jul 2010
          • 57

          Great news Kevin.
          Haven't found much else except the random reboots on my Joggler.
          I still need to try and look into that. Oh and the loss of status from HAH but waiting for new HAH release to see if thats fixed.

          Comment

          • Kevin
            Moderator
            • Jan 2004
            • 558

            Originally posted by BodgeIT View Post
            Haven't found much else except the random reboots on my Joggler.
            Are you now using static IP ?

            iServer also gets very confused when the Joggler changes IP when using DHCP which mine was doing every day at midnight.

            K

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            • BodgeIT
              Automated Home Sr Member
              • Jul 2010
              • 57

              I was using DHCP with a statically reserved IP for the Joggler. I have had some issue with this method before i.e. Squeezeboxes didn't like it. Have now changed that to fixed IP and will monitor.

              I'd like to restart the iServer daily but can't find a way to start the app with a specific security profile active, does that matter?

              Comment

              • Kevin
                Moderator
                • Jan 2004
                • 558

                I use reserved DHCP addresses on quite a few bits of kit and seems to work OK - only reason I don't use more is that my router only supports ten of these. Interesting that SB devices didn't like this - although I think mine are all now static. I mainly use the DHCP allocations for my Sonos gear which doesn't allow static , plus any roving devices like my phone.

                Re restarting iServer every day - short answer no it doesn't matter,

                (typically) longer KH answer .... It shouldn't be needed and if it is for some reason I'd rather try and find out why. I'd recommend you don't do this. If you are wanting to build in resilience a system that monitored iServers heartbeats and warned or restarted iServer should it be stopped or fail would be far better. As xAPFlash isn't as yet providing unattended control it's not in a particularly critical role. It's more like a fancy lightswitch currently. Implementing iServer as a Windows service might be a useful change though.

                iServer does various things at startup and for about 15 minutes afterwards , for example building it's internal list of 'known xAP' devices. Although not used by xAPFlash, iServer also models the state of known xAP BSC endpoints which takes around 10 minutes to complete. At the point you restart iServer any connected devices will lose their state synch for a short while.

                Re active profiles. If iServer is restarted then any devices connected to iServer will detect that their socket connection was broken and should reconnect pretty much immediatley when iServer starts again , so you don't need to worry there, it's all handled automatically. xAPFlash might be a bit aggressive in this respect sending too many reconnect requests as I have seen a race condition occasionally where iServerr shows more connected clients than actually exist. This may already have been fixed. iServer supports multiple different profiles concurrently. I've also occasionally seen a situation where the xAP button in xAP Flash shows an increasing count of absent xAP devices. I need to get to the bottom of that, I have changed some code here in the next beta - we'll see if that fixes it.

                xAP Flash can create xAP endpoints for all of it's internal elements plus status reporting and control for internals like volume, screenbrightness, screensaver etc . All buttons(two endpoints each), textboxes, pages report via BSC and are controllable for visibility. There can be quite a lot of these if you have them all always reporting - my larger template design presents around 800 I think ! Instead of enabling all these globally the next beta allows individual elements to be xAP enabled which is much better.

                iServer has an (arbitrary) limit of 5000 endpoints it stores, and the more there are the harder it has to work as it has to search all these at startup for every incoming xAP message . I don't expect anyone to ever reach this limit although interestingly whilst testing various peoples xAPFlash templates, and because iServer remembers every endpoint it's ever heard, I have managed to exceed it. I need to consider how to better handle this within iServer. The number of entries in the knownxAP.txt file shows how many devices it has ever heard.

                Keeping the number of xAP endpoints as low as possible on your xAP networks is the recommended way as it reduces traffic. Disable the reporting of things that can't possibly ever change state . A xAP Netiom I/O board for example reports over a hundred endpoints out of the box. If you're only using 6 of the inputs/outputs then disable the rest.

                K
                Last edited by Kevin; 4 November 2010, 02:22 PM.

                Comment

                • SiliconPixel
                  Automated Home Sr Member
                  • May 2007
                  • 52

                  Label offset

                  Is label offset only for vertical alignment?

                  I have some buttons I designed where i'd like the label to appear over the button but the button has an icon LHS - so I'd like to offset the label to the right.

                  Is this possible, or is that a feature request?

                  Thanks,

                  Paul.

                  Comment

                  • SiliconPixel
                    Automated Home Sr Member
                    • May 2007
                    • 52

                    Ah, I also noticed that the on state button (using my custome PNG button) overwrites the label (or the label disappears). The offset for the label was -40 so it'd appear over the button - is this a bug or are labels not intended to appear over the buttons?

                    Comment

                    • Kevin
                      Moderator
                      • Jan 2004
                      • 558

                      Originally posted by SiliconPixel View Post
                      Is label offset only for vertical alignment?
                      .. I'd like to offset the label to the right. Is this possible, or is that a feature request?
                      It's not currently possible, it wouldn't be overly hard to do - but there's another way assuming the buttons aren't individually changing visibility*.

                      Originally posted by SiliconPixel View Post
                      Ah, I also noticed that the on state button (using my custome PNG button) overwrites the label (or the label disappears). The offset for the label was -40 so it'd appear over the button - is this a bug or are labels not intended to appear over the buttons?
                      It's not a bug, labels were intended to be outside of the button area. Externally loaded buttons use two or more image files that are swapped as necessary and hence this happens should the label be offset into the image area. I may be able to stop this happening however..

                      You might be able to get around this using a BSCtext field associated with the button but this would be fixed position wise and centralised to the button which is not what you're wanting...

                      The way around this would be to place a text box over the button. Textboxes within a page are added after buttons so they should be on top of both button images and you can set it's x,y at pixel resolution

                      K

                      * A label is associated with a button whereas a text box isn't. If a button becomes invisible or moves then it's label will to , as would it's BSC text field. This would only be a problem for individual buttons - and not for buttons on a page where the page visibility changes and hence hides the buttons and textboxes within that page.

                      Comment

                      • SiliconPixel
                        Automated Home Sr Member
                        • May 2007
                        • 52

                        I thought that might be the case - I'll have a look into text boxes although that's a bit fiddly during design - otherwise I'll have to rethink my design.

                        Cheers,

                        Paul.

                        Comment

                        • BodgeIT
                          Automated Home Sr Member
                          • Jul 2010
                          • 57

                          Updated HAH firmware

                          Hi Kevin,
                          Thought the new update to HAH would bring more clarity, should have known better.
                          After upgrading I had to reenter new uids for each of my rf devices in my xapconfig.xml. Most other things now work but all the buttons controlling the rf devices don't. When I look at XFX, I see that when I press a button I get an on and immediate off. If it's on it works viceversa. I imagine I will need to bring it up with the guys at HAH but wondered if you had seen this?

                          Here's my config for the page and a couple of buttons:
                          <page NAME="Control">
                          <width>355</width>
                          <height>266</height>
                          <visible>true</visible>
                          <group>Center</group>
                          <background>
                          <image></image>
                          <visible>true</visible>
                          <posX>165</posX>
                          <posY>20</posY>
                          <width>407</width>
                          <height>220</height>
                          <border>true</border>
                          <bordercolour>0x000000</bordercolour>
                          </background>
                          <button NAME="TV etc">
                          <gridX>2</gridX>
                          <gridY>0</gridY>
                          <posX>-53</posX>
                          <posY>+30</posY>
                          <style>blue</style>
                          <visible>true</visible>
                          <xAP>
                          <schema>xAPBSC</schema>
                          <uid>FF00DBA0</uid>
                          <source>dbzoo.livebox.Controller:rf.1</source>
                          </xAP>
                          <mode>control</mode>
                          </button>
                          <button NAME="Sub Woofer">
                          <gridX>2</gridX>
                          <gridY>1</gridY>
                          <posY>+25</posY>
                          <posX>-53</posX>
                          <visible>true</visible>
                          <style>blue</style>
                          <xAP>
                          <schema>xAPBSC</schema>
                          <uid>FF00DBA3</uid>
                          <source>dbzoo.livebox.Controller:rf.4</source>
                          </xAP>
                          <mode>status</mode>
                          </button>

                          Digging some more, I'm getting the same thing on pagetoggle buttons too but these still seem to have the effect of of working.

                          Any suggestions?
                          Last edited by BodgeIT; 11 November 2010, 10:46 AM.

                          Comment

                          • Kevin
                            Moderator
                            • Jan 2004
                            • 558

                            Originally posted by BodgeIT View Post
                            Hi Kevin,
                            Thought the new update to HAH would bring more clarity, should have known better.
                            I updated to firmware 253 yesterday but haven't played much - both Brett and Derek have Jogglers but I dont think either of them are using xAP Flash (yet) - they do intend to try the next beta..
                            After upgrading I had to reenter new uids for each of my rf devices in my xapconfig.xml.
                            That's a shame, the UID's are the way that iServer/xAPFlash recognises your xAP devices - if their firmware update changed the UID's that's not very helpful. UID's should persist across restarts and updates. Hopefully they wont change again and it was only a small edit.

                            HAH has used xAP v1.2 which has a limit of 254 endpoints - and instead of using all 254 they have reused the same low numbers 1,2,3 etc :-( This then means that they have had to change the main UID digits for every application , Pachube, CurrentCost, 1-wire, RF etc which has the effect that their single HAH controller now looks like lots of independent xAP HAH devices on the network... Not ideal but it is workable. Using xAP v1.3 would have been tidier.

                            Most other things now work but all the buttons controlling the rf devices don't. When I look at XFX, I see that when I press a button I get an on and immediate off. If it's on it works viceversa. I imagine I will need to bring it up with the guys at HAH but wondered if you had seen this?
                            You mean that xAPFlash is sending an ON command immediately followed by an OFF command or that is the 'event' response coming back from HAH ? If it's the former then it's my issue...

                            If it's the latter then it's kinda a problem with RF control that has no feedback . I think the HAH guys quite rightly say that they have no means of determining the state of a remote RF controlled device. What they seem to be doing is reporting the state of the transmitted RF signal - i.e. it pulses on and then off. Do they maintain a state in the web UI for RF devices ? If so then I guess they should also xAP report it. xAP Flash will just display whatever state the device that you are controlling is reporting.

                            I don't use RF control from HAH - In my setup I've tried wherever possible to use devices that can report their status, which in general RF can't , except ZigBee / Z-Wave etc. Where I do have RF control (HomeEasy) I have only controller (RFXCom) and I track it's commands to determine state. It can also report any control messages it hears which could be used to supplement status...

                            Digging some more, I'm getting the same thing on pagetoggle buttons too but these still seem to have the effect of of working.
                            Any suggestions?
                            Ahh ... I think you're now saying that it's the xapbsc.cmd's that are wrong then ??? - but how are you managing to send xAPBSC.cmds from a page toggle button ? Are you adding <xAP><on> and <xAP><off> tags in the XML ? If you have enabled BSC reporting from xAPFlash then remember that the state= represents the visibility of the button and not the state of the device that button is controlling. It does report the buttons displayed state too (which matches the devices state) in the level= parameter using a value of 0-10 corresponding to the 10 possible states a xAP device can be in (on/off/absent/error/blank/highlighted/dimmed etc..)

                            K

                            <UPDATE> I have just been trying this with your XML and it does seem that the HAH with firmware version 253 is behaving differently to 252. Does 253 include the new xAP libraries that Brett was writing ? Curiously when the xapbsc.cmd state=toggle message is resent from xFX Viewer to HAH it works every time so Viewer is changing the message - likely by stripping or adding a leading / trailing chr(10) - I'll take a look at the differences in the two messages and update this shortly. I don't see the immediate on/off transition though.

                            Originally posted by BodgeIT View Post
                            After upgrading I had to reenter new uids for each of my rf devices in my xapconfig.xml. Most other things now work but all the buttons controlling the rf devices don't.
                            So other things are working - like the relays for example ? For me nothing that is controllable is working. The messages are byte for byte identical so I can only assume now that it's a broadcast address issue maybe...
                            Last edited by Kevin; 11 November 2010, 04:13 PM.

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                            • Alanmh
                              Automated Home Jr Member
                              • Dec 2005
                              • 12

                              Hi Kevin

                              I have HAH and am keen to help with testing etc, but not on your beta yet. I did PM you yesterday,.

                              Apologies for hassling, but am keen to get stuck in

                              ALan

                              Comment

                              • Kevin
                                Moderator
                                • Jan 2004
                                • 558

                                Originally posted by Alanmh View Post
                                I have HAH and am keen to help with testing etc, but not on your beta yet. I did PM you yesterday,.

                                Apologies for hassling, but am keen to get stuck in
                                Hi Alan - I did reply this morning .....

                                beta 5 has not been released as yet and as soon as it is I've got a whole bunch of people wanting to jump in - the more the merrier. You can try the current beta if you wish but quite a bit will need redoing when you move to the formal beta 5..and if your using firmware 253 on HAH looks like there's an issue currently ... up to you..

                                Brett and I are on the HAH case....

                                K

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