ACE and CM12 and misc

["Dan Hoehnen" <dhoehnen@xxxxxxx>]

> > No, ACE does not support the CM12 now.  But, it is planned to be
added.
> ACE
>
> Just read this bit after 40 mins downloading! Another typical thing to
be
> added to my list. (repeat RTFM, RTFM - and the F <> friendly!)

Well, how about I take this opportunity to find out from everyone here what
kind of CM12 support is needed to make ACE attractive.  That way, ACE won't
have sit around idle on your hard drive for too long :)

One important point to make about ACE.  ACE is NOT a scheduling type piece
of ha software.  It does not do "If dark then A1 ON" and similar
type
actions.  ACE leaves it up to ECS, HomeSeer, HomeVision, Stargate, Omni,
etc. to make those conditional tests.  The results of those tests can then
be used to send commands to ACE to perform functions that your main ha
program can not do (send an e-mail, upload a file via ftp, download a web
page and parse it, speak a string using tts, display info on 1 or more ACE
Client screens, send data out a serial port on any ACE equipped pc, and
more).

Remember, once a program is talking to a serial port connected device, that
port is in use and no other prgram can talk to it.  So, if you are using
HomeSeer (HS) (or any other program that uses the CM12 for X-10) then you
don't want ACE to support the CM12 directly, you want ACE to support HS.
That way HS can send commands to ACE, ACE can send commands to HS, and HS
controls the CM12.

On the other hand, if you have a home-grown ha system and write your own
stuff, then you may want ACE to directly support the CM12 and connect to it
via a serial port.  this is because you can access ACE from your own
program
in order to send commands to the CM12 and to get messages from the CM12.

At least that's my view on it.  I'd like to hear from everyone interested
if
you need ACE to talk to some other program that is using the CM12, or if
you
need ACE to connect to the CM12 directly.

Maybe all ACE needs to do is support HS?  But, there are a lot of common
features between HS and ACE, so this may not be a greatly desired feature.
Since I am only familiar with HS and not a user, maybe those of you who are
users could suggest how ACE could compliment HS, if at all.

Open to ideas...

Dan




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