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Thread: Ongoing development

  1. #1
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    Default Ongoing development

    I'd like to request a 'state-of-play' for xAP. Is anyone actively developing any Connectors? Is anyone apart from Michael McSharry updating any existing Connectors or Applications?

    The reason I ask, is that I would like to add an RFXtrx433 to my setup. This would let me dump most of my X10 kit as well as being able to easily add weather/smoke detection/blind control/curtain control/ gate control without adding more cables.

    I have been running xAP for more than 9 years and have done a few installs for clients as well as my own network. Overall it has been great. I feel bad that I don't have the time/skills to help develop Connectors or maintain the existing Hubs, Connectors and Applications. I would like to know if now would be a sensible time to jump ship to something with a more active development community.

    Picking an alternative isn't going to be easy, my current setup is:

    xAP Floorplan (all my scripted events, web interface - stable)
    xAP Netiom (window sensors, door sensors, door bell, relays - rock stable)
    xAP X10 GUI (lights, sockets, remotes - stable)
    xAP mcsK3145 (temperature sensors - unstable)
    xAP mcs1Wire (temperature sensors, iButton door entry - unstable)
    xAP mscCID (Caller ID - stable)
    xAP Jabber (messaging - unstable)
    xAP Weather (local weather - stable)

    I have been involved in a number of Open Source projects over the years and I understand that interest and available time can wane, so I'm just trying to find out if anyone was interested in finding a way to get a couple of new Connectors done.

  2. #2
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    I'm not sure about the state of play for xAP, it looks pretty much dead to me, but I'm an outsider, so there may well be a lot of ongoing development that's hidden to me.

    I can say that working with the rfxtrx433 is great, the interface is nice to work with, and I have a Node.js JavaScript app undergoing development, of which the rfxcom library is an offshoot, currently, it only handles a subset of the possible rfxtrx433 devices, but adding more should be trivial (the test infrastructure is hopefully good enough to make that trivial).

    If you're interested, https://npmjs.org/package/rfxcom

    I'm happy to answer questions / fix bugs / add new features :-)

    Even if Node.js isn't your bag, the rfxtrx433 is great to work with and I can recommend it.

  3. #3
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    TritonT,

    Welcome - first post I see, and in a way there in a nutshell is why we are where we are. I know there are a lot of lurkers that use xAP extensively but don't contribute back to the project either because they don't have the time or skills to do so. But there's lot's of documentation, how to's, 'my setup' stories that would help too.

    xAP is pretty mature now with v1.3 and is not in need of any basic protocol refinement. It does what it says on the tin and is still AFAIK the only solution positioned to be simple, expandable and accessible to everyone with basic programming/scripting skills. BTW I encompass xPL in this too. It allows hobbyist level upward users to achieve home automation across all their disparate devices. Unless anyone can suggest another viable alternative with these credentials ?

    What it hasn't achieved though is the snowball of users contributing their own conduits and applications for the specific devices they own. I know people do still write these but they are often never published due to being feature incomplete, hardcoded to the originators system, or because suitable documentation and support time is not available. Most of the existing applications have come from the real enthusiasts supporting their personal devices and systems. They don't own or have a vested interest to include the other devices people request. That said the base of xAP applications and devices is pretty extensive.

    The RFXtrx433 exactly illustrates this issue. Both xAP and xPL have conduits for the previous RFXCOM hardware and those have taken much investement of time and support but even when seemingly complete these applications now demand further maintainance as new hardware is released. The original authors don't have that new hardware, the time or any real incentive to support it as their own system is working fine. As there are no $$ involved xAP has that dichotomy of time / reward.

    I hear the RFXtrx433 is a great product but I personally don't own one . I do keep looking at it though and have seriously considered purchasing one but actually, if I'm honest, even if I did and wrote a xAP conduit for it I am not sure I would publish it as the time and support obligation would be too much for me currently. I too would really like to see a xAP conduit available :-)

    I still use xAP extensively and I plan on doing so for the forseeable future as it is the only solution I know of that enables me, as a hobbyist level developer, to integrate anything and everything I own. Yes, I would love there to be vast libraries of conduits and applications appearing daily but I also accept that isn't going to happen and development here is pretty dormant. I myself keep adding xAP conduits as I forage new gadgets but these will likely never be available generally due to time and support issues. Been there, done that.

    So for me xAP is still the solution . I do not know of any real alternative but I would love there to be something offering a vast device library , manufacturer agnostic and accessible to hobbyist level coders. I have bitten the bullet a little in my AV implementation allowing Crestron into my system, but only after it was tamed with a xAP module too. You do get huge libraries with Crestron but you pay $$ too.

    Kevin
    Last edited by Kevin; 11th October 2012 at 09:08 PM.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by TritonT View Post
    xAP mcsK3145 (temperature sensors - unstable)
    xAP mcs1Wire (temperature sensors, iButton door entry - unstable)
    It's interesting - I get more comment about xAP issues with these mcs 1-wire apps than anything else. It's a shame as it's nothing to do with xAP but usually the vagueries of 1-wire networks, or possibly that conduit I'm not sure.

    In recognition of this Daniel Berenguer made the OPNOne - a totally embedded 1-wire xAP solution with many different devices supported. Works brilliantly and rock solid but it had an associated cost of around $100 which was deemed too expensive and so after the first or second batch it was discontinued. There are of course some other embedded 1-wire controllers that can talk xAP but none as flexible or low cost as that.

    K

  5. #5
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    Triton,

    Just a thought. I'm guessing you're a HomeSeer user and RFXCOM sell a plugin for that. Does that not support the new rfxtxr433 ? As the manufacturer they have the incentive to do that. If so then you essentially already have a xAP enabled rfxtxr433 by using the mcs XAP HomeSeer plugin. Any HS device can be exposed on xAP this way.

    K

  6. #6
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    Ok, I've spent a couple of hours knocking out a quick xAP broadcaster in Node.js, it's not quite finished, as I need to get it sending to the correct broadcast address, but am on it.

    The plan is that you will be able to do something like this...

    Code:
    var rfxcom = require('rfxcom'),
         xap = require('xap'),
         rfxtrx = new rfxcom.RfxCom('/dev/ttyUSB0'),
         transmitter = new xap.XAPTransmitter(
            {class: 'Thermostat.status', source: 'rfxcom.WMR800.external', uid: 'FF000001'});
     
    rfxtrx.on('th3', function (evt) {
      transmitter.send('temp.current', {'temp': evt.temperature, 'units': 'C'});
      // could log it to Cosm, or do something else here...
    });
    
    rfxtrx.initialise();
    I'll hopefully get the last couple of issues ironed out over the weekend and make an initial release, but I have the message generation working, and transmitting, just need to see if I can determine the broadcast address automatically...

  7. #7
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    Default Work in progress released.

    Ok, I've released 0.0.1.

    I'm not a fan of xAP, this is just a proof of concept, I'm working on a parser for xAP messages, but I thought I'd get this out there...

    The rfxcom library will currently report data from Oregon Scientific devices, and OWL electricity monitors, but it's fairly trivial to add support for anything that the rfxtrx433 supports.

    I've tested this on a Raspberry Pi hooked up to the Rfxtrx433 with this code...

    Code:
    var RfxCom = require('rfxcom').RfxCom,
        xap = require('xap'),
        rfxcom = new RfxCom("/dev/ttyUSB0", {debug: true}),
        transmitter = new xap.XAPTransmitter(
          {class: 'Thermostat.status', source: 'rfxcom.WMR800.external', uid: 'FF123400'});
    
    rfxcom.on("th3", function(evt) {
      transmitter.send('temp.current', {'temp': evt.temperature, 'units': 'C'});
    });
    
    rfxcom.initialise();
    And looked at the packets being transmitted in Wireshark, it seems fine, I'm looking for a simple xAP app to report the messages, but it's unlikely I'd build on top of xAP (I'm not a fan of UDP, and I can't see a benefit of a message format that is more work to parse than JSON).

    But if this is of use to anybody, feel free, and if it doesn't work, I will fix any reported bugs.

    Oh, and it'd be useful if I provided a link, https://github.com/bigkevmcd/node-xap

  8. #8
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    Interesting Kevin.. thanks for this.. I wish I had a rftxrx433 to try it out.. tempted again now...

    xFX Viewer is the standard listener app. (.NET) but that may not be appropriate for you. What xAP schema are you using ? Happy to help on the xAP compliance side if you need anything..
    http://www.erspearson.com/xAP/xFx/viewer_main.htm

    UDP was chosen at the time to enforce a simple broadcast mechanism with low overhead and to deliberately defeat private point to point communication. There are other solutions of course. You can use xAP over TCP into the xServer or iServer application which were primarily intended for WAN linking of xAP networks. iServer is embedded in several devices and there may even be a Raspberry PI flavour - or certainly source code. The iServer has an added advantage of implementing on the fly filtering to rminimise traffic to less capable devices if needed.

    A little while ago it was suggested to look at enhancing xAP with JSON but the original proposer didn't follow this through. It's an interesting possibility though and I would welcome anyone taking on this..

    ISTR there was also talk of porting the whole HAH project from the LiveBox to Raspberry PI
    http://www.dbzoo.com/livebox/livebox


    Cheers Kevin

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
    I myself keep adding xAP conduits as I forage new gadgets but these will likely never be available generally due to time and support issues.
    One thing I have done a lot of work with is a native iOS (iPad / iPhone / iPod) touch screen control application that is fully customisable and supports xAP directly either via UDP or iServer (TCP) the latter being recommended because of potential WiFi issues. This is xAP integration within an existing ($15) commercial application. The additional xAP support is at no cost. It hasn't been released yet but could be available for beta testing as it is very nearly complete. If anyone is interested let me know as it's something that I do want to get out there.

    Kevin

  10. #10
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    @ Kevin

    Different people will have different theories as to why a particular project does not become dominant in it's area. In the case of xAP I think a couple of things that haven't helped are; not communicating in a centralised forum and not having a centralised open code repository under SVN or Git.

    You must find it infuriating (I know I do) that other projects have come along and 'reinvented the wheel' instead of building on xAP. DomotiGa and OpenSourceAutomation have made amazing progress and have support for more devices than xAP does, however, architecturally xAP makes much more sense to me.

    A few years ago my primary control method was MediaPortal, secondary Jabber/XMPP and occasionally Floorplan's web interface. Now the MediaPoral plugin is obsolete and xAP Jabber doesn't work reliably (can't pin down why) so I've just got Floorplan left.

    As an aside the MediaPortal plugin was brilliant, it allowed me to control everything from any of the house TVs in a unified interface. It even had screen popping of events like incoming calls, washing machine finishing etc. using and slightly extended version of message.display. Luckily all the code is available, so I may pay someone to put it back together, might only take a couple of hours.

    Cost of equipment is not much of an issue for me anymore, but I try to only buy equipment and services with an open API. That way there is always a chance that someone will code for it. Personally I'm in favour of open sourcing code onto the internet when it is no longer going to be updated or I can't face supporting it, however I realise that there are many reasons others don't want to do that.

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