RE: On and off topic... recovering a pine table and when Homeseerfailed...

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

>
>For less laborious large time changes, I guess a second macro could
>"bright/dim" by say an hour (a feature Ihave seen on a timer
I have used in
>the past which had setting hour then setting minutes rather than
cycling
>through them all).


Hmm... that's a thought! - I might do that!


>

>
>Interesting. I thought about this myself a while ago and even have a
>machine
>lined up for the job. I never actually worked out all the logistics of
>deciding whether the main PC was alive and whether to replicate all
>interfaces and have the two machines swap in the event of one failing
so
>the
>main would then become backup. But unless there was some major problem
>requiring attention it looks like your system is sufficient backup in
the
>even of any failure.
>
>I guess from your description you are using some sort of Homeseer event
to
>do the "ping" and checking it is alive and some form of
script to
>disable/enable during the changeover?
>

Yup, that's exactly what happens, - on the "live" Homeseer
machine, I have
an event configured which is triggered by X10 received, and which responds
by sending out a corresponding X10 signal. - that's the reply to the
"ping",
and is all that is necessary on this machine. (I have actually done a
couple
of other things as well, such as configuring virtual devices on the 2 X10
addresses used for the ping, but this is purely cosmetic so that usefull
names appear in the log rather than just addresses)

On the backup Homeseer machine, I have set up a repeating event (running
every 10 minutes), which runs a script. All the intelligence is in the
script - this sends the X10 "ping" signals, waits for a reply,
and performs
all the required actions accordingly. There is also a virtual device
configured on this machine to keep track of the status of the main machine
(up, failed, being rebooted, or unknown) etc.

So far, it seems to be working well - I have the script set up to send an
SMS to my phone when a status change occurs, and I have seen a few happen,
and they have all been handled properly! (the UPS that the main HA PC is
on,
is going dodgy, and is occasionally cutting power to it! - must get round
to
sorting that out..)

You're welcome to a copy of the script if you want, it might be useful as a
starting point.

BTW, I did email Rich to try to find out about the licensing issues
regarding running 2 instances of Homeseer, but he never replied (unusually,
- perhaps he was on vacation?). So I went ahead and did it anyway, but I
have declined to pass the script up to the HS message board in case there
are any objections to me encouraging people publicly to run multiple copies
on a single license...


Paul G.


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