xAP Flash nee Joggler beta 5

[Kevin]

It's gone very quiet ....is all good in this pre beta 5f then - no one got any issues to report ?
(I think Gary's file is loading now)

If so, although we've made a few changes, I'll get it released to everyone as beta 5 .

K

PS I do want to clarify that this application only interfaces with your home automation via xAP . You will need to have some xAP enabled devices on your network to control or monitor. There are many ways to achieve this and most of the leading Home Automation applications also have xAP inbuilt or plugins available so if you're using one you're likely already OK. If you have X10 there's a free xAP (BSC) conduit too. There are some xAP applications that present internet sourced data eg weather, TV listings etc available if you have no hardware - I need to think of one to suggest that is easy to start using with xAP Flash ( i.e. uses BSC), any suggestions anyone ?

See the main xAP Flash thread for some more info on xAP
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbull...&postcount=111

[kev_t]

Kevin

I have not had much time to play with this latest release, but it looks pretty good so far

Thanks

KevinT

[BodgeIT]

Apologies Kevin, I've also had major distractions this week.

I'm noticing a couple of things:
1. Time is being shown in buttons even though set to false in layout at xapconfig level. Nothing set in config.xml, nothing set in buttons.
2. System still seems to loose status of devices i.e. not turning out light after pressing when on. We have discussed this before and is more than likely more to do with HAH but seems to be fixed by restarting iServer. I will do some more work on this and come up with something more concrete.

Other than the upper lower case <style> tag issue I had at the beginning, everything else seems to work well...

Oh, have you made any change to the screen saver functionality? I've noticed a couple of times that the device goes into a sudo sleep, like a black screen but I can still see backlight effects, normaly it goes dead black?

[Kevin]

1. Time is being shown in buttons even though set to false in layout at xapconfig level. Nothing set in config.xml, nothing set in buttons.

We've caught that one I think - I only noticed that button level time stamps couldn't be turned off .. so I'll check it works at the xapconfig.xml level too.

2. System still seems to loose status of devices i.e. not turning out light after pressing when on. We have discussed this before and is more than likely more to do with HAH but seems to be fixed by restarting iServer. I will do some more work on this and come up with something more concrete.

I have not seen this issue at all so it might well be device specific. These are on/off commands are they (not toggle or dimmers/sliders) ? The best way to check is by watching the xAP message exchange using xFX Viewer. If the correct xapbsc.cmd is sent and if HAH does respond correctly with a xapbsc.event then it could be a xAPFlash issue. Let me know what you find and if problematic copy me those messages too.

You are using the latest iServer aren't you ? - as supplied with pre beta 5. (0.1.0.11 in startup screen)

Other than the upper lower case <style> tag issue I had at the beginning, everything else seems to work well...

The style names were case sensitive but are no longer from beta5f onwards. Filenames within <style> tags are still case sensitive as are XML tag names throughout. Non existant styles no longer hang the startup process but a missing background image file could still do.

Oh, have you made any change to the screen saver functionality? I've noticed a couple of times that the device goes into a sudo sleep, like a black screen but I can still see backlight effects, normaly it goes dead black?

Only those screensaver and screen brightness options that are documented - <startupscreenbrightnesslevel> <pausescreensaver> - these should be restored on exit IIRC too. Do you use these tags ? It sounds like screenbrightness might be getting set very low -- does it come back with a touch ?

K

[SiliconPixel]

Hi all,

I've just upgraded to beta 5 from a fairly old version and first of all wanted to say a really well deserved well done - it's a really excellent app

I'm just getting to grips with all the changes - sliders are nice.

One query so far:

As K will know, I have CB and HV linked via K's gateway. When I use the slider and it slides down to zero, it turns the light off, so even if you slide the slider up again, it stays off. This can happen accidentally and then means you have to exit the slider and turn the light back on again.

Is this by design or a quirk of my setup?

I've not read through all the previous posts here, so appologies if I've missed this.

Thanks,

Paul.

[SiliconPixel]

Another Q - I've got two versions of the tags XLS - "XML Tags beta 5-02" and "XML Tags-03"

I presume 03 (from the post here) is the latest rather than the one supplied in preBeta5.zip?

Thanks.

[Kevin]

Another Q - I've got two versions of the tags XLS - "XML Tags beta 5-02" and "XML Tags-03"

I presume 03 (from the post here) is the latest rather than the one supplied in preBeta5.zip?

Thanks.

Yes the 'updated' link I provided is the later (version 3) . I dropped the beta 5 bit because it wont be specific to a release.

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbull...1&postcount=74

K

[Kevin]

As K will know, I have CB and HV linked via K's gateway. When I use the slider and it slides down to zero, it turns the light off, so even if you slide the slider up again, it stays off. This can happen accidentally and then means you have to exit the slider and turn the light back on again.

Is this by design or a quirk of my setup?

I've not read through all the previous posts here, so appologies if I've missed this.

It depends on how you have the C-Bus gateway configured to report when level is 0 (this is set via the HV config variables). If you have it so that when level is 0 then state is reported as OFF then the above will be what happens ... but it allows you to preset dim levels.

IIRC you requested this behaviour because at night you were not turning lights off but just dimming them gradually down to nil and hence xAP wise they remained on (retaining 0 as their memory level) and this caused some other issue for you. I think it was that when next switched ON it was bringing them back on at 0 rather than at the level before the ramp down started. This was because in the morning you weren't ramping up or setting to a specific level but just issuing ON commands.

Didn't we also add <mode>lcontrol</mode> as a specific feature into xAP Flash to address this for you ? lcontrol forces a state=on to be sent when level>0. Unfortunately there are currently* no combinational modes available eg <mode>slider</mode> + <mode>lcontrol</mode>

There's a description of why this happens here... I have my C-Bus gateway differently - ie to stay 'on' at 0 brightness and so the slider doesn't turn them off.

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbull...2&postcount=65

K

* The <modes> are actually already coded in a way that supports combinational tags - which is why we introduced <mode>function</mode> for ones that definitely were mutually exclusive. However we currently do not recover multiple <mode> tags within one section - it only picks up the first. Maybe in a future release.

[SiliconPixel]

Thanks Kevin,

Yes, that makes sense - I'll re-explore and see if I can do what you're doing - and weigh up each approach.

Many thanks.

[SiliconPixel]

BTW - is that HV variable documented somewhere - I'll go have a read...