RE: CBus and Home Automation

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxx>]

Hello Michael,

That sounds to be a fantastic setup - I envisage loads of 'Dear
Santa' notes being scribbled as we speak...=20

You are right in that Clipsal seemed to have missed the point a
little with HomeGate - and indeed their C-Touch units. All of the
conditional logic is missing. I think they aimed squarely at the non
'enthusiast' . They are however rumoured to be bringing out a more capable
controller sometime soon but information is scarce and timescales
uncertain=
.

As you say you need the brains - and there are a number of
controllers around - some standalone like HomeVison, Ocelot, (Comfort) and
JDS Stargate and some PC based applications like Autom8it, HomeSeer, ACE,
Misterhouse, Harmony etc. None of these I believe interfaces with C-Bus
though. There is also a new product called HomeBrain due to appear, a
hardware controller anticipated to have inbuilt C-Bus support.  C-Bus is
also a proprietary protocol and little information is available on how to
interact with it, just recently however a small amount of information has
been released publicly.

In the meantime what are your options... ?

HOMEVISION : Given I said this does not support C-Bus this may come
as a surprise. HomeVision is one of the favourite controllers among the
UKH=
A
community not least because of the features, rock solid stability and
fantastic support that the manufacturer supplies. I have done some work to
enable C-Bus support within HV. Basically there is a new ROM being
develope=
d
by CSI that will add support for 'Custom Lighting' - using the features
thi=
s
provides we can support C-Bus. There are two ways this can be achieved..

1) I have written some macros (scripts) that you can merge with your
own to provide full control for all the C-Bus groups from within HV - this
is very nicely integrated in that you can use names and apply conditional
logic just as you can with X10 for example. The HV unit connects to C-Bus
via a spare serial port and onward to the C-Bus RS232 interface.  I am
unsure as to whether I will support status monitoring of C-Bus though via
this route, there are a number of issues both commercial and technical, the
handling of C-Bus status information can affect the performance of HV too.
This solution should be available shortly once the new ROM is finalised by
CSI.
2) The fuller featured way is to use a small external black box.
This again connects to HV via a spare serial port but offers a direct
connection onto C-Bus and also some other I/O including an Ethernet port.
This solution will provide for greater performance and features including
full status maintenance within HV. It effectively handles the C-Bus
processing leaving HV to do the scheduling and conditional logic. This
should be available in about a month after the ROM is released.

Some more information on these two solutions can be found in this
thread - or ask away here.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homevision-users/message/6359


Lastly I must mention xAP.  xAP is a protocol to allow many
different devices typically found in the Home Automation world to exchange
information and control each other. Given C-Bus was proprietary I have
bridged it to the xAP world allowing you to control C-Bus via xAP. xAP
interconnects many devices including CallerID, mp3 players, X10, AV
equipment, security, video recorders, news and weather feeds, OSD
messaging=
,
text to speech etc etc. More info on xAP at www.xapautomation.org.=20
This bridging to C-Bus is actually performed by the same hardware
that will connect to HomeVision so you have two possible routes here. xAP
currently does not offer a dedicated hardware controller or even a fancy
graphic based scheduler but they will be here soon. In the meantime if you
are familiar with VB/C/.NET you can use xPLHal or the xAP OCX / development
frameworks to accomplish this. I am not sure how comfortable you are
software wise.
Several software applications have indicated they may add xAP
support in the future. MisterHouse has some inbuilt support and Autom8it,
ACE and Harmony I believe intend to add it. HomeBrain may support it too. =
=20
=09
HOMESEER which is perhaps the most prolific of HA applications will
have xAP support available very soon... watch this space.  It will become
the user interface to xAP for both non programmers and script kiddies too.
Reading from your message though I think you are being swayed in the
direction of a hardware based controller rather than a Windows applicaton.
HomeVision would be my recommendation, and I am sure many others too.  I
would recommend the external back box - probably best referred to as a
C-Bu=
s
gateway for best feature and performance with C-Bus.=20=20

Please bear in mind that I have a slight commercial interest here though
:-=
)

Kevin





> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Sanders [mailto:m_w_sanders@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 11 November 2003 15:06
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] CBus and Home Automation
>=20
> Dear all,
>=20
> I have recently installed a full CBus system into my apartment -
> lights, switched power, electric blinds, IR control and even a CBus
> PIR.  For control, I am using Neo switches and HomeGate running on a
> webpad.
>=20
> Although I am very happy with the system, it is missing a fairly major
> element of my original plan - home AUTOMATION.  Of course, I can use
> HomeGate schedules to turns things on and off etc and the PIR can
> activate a scene.  However, HomeGate is software and therefore PC
> dependent.  It certainly doesn't seem to allow for logic based control
> (e.g. IF ...  THEN ... ELSE ...).  I have also heard of systems which
> "learn" usage patterns over a certain period of time etc.  I
feel a
> little like I have installed all the bits to control the physical
> devices and now I'm missing the "brain"!
>=20
> I suspect that I need something like Comfort or HomeVision or similar
> but I am really at a loss as to how to get started.  Is there a CBus
> specific controller I should be looking for?  Am I thinking along the
> right lines to get the additional functionality?
>=20
> Very grateful for any comments / suggestions.
>=20
> Kind regards,
>=20
> Michael.
>=20
>=20
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