Basic Status & Control - New version BSCv1.3

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The current v1.2 Basic Status and Control spec is about to be revised to
v1.3

Following some feedback from users of BSC on the HomeSeer lists and
also some practical experience we are enhancing the spec to provide a
neater
and feature enhanced integration with several other state models including
of course xAP Desktop, HomeSeer, C-Bus, HomeVision, X10 etc. I am hopeful
that revised applications supporting BSC v13 will be appearing for the
various xAP conduits for these devices and also BSC Mapper in the near
future. Certainly C-Bus, xAP Desktop and HomeSeer are in their final
testing
already with BSC v 1.3. xAP now allows via HomeSeer complete integration of
devices with MainLobby for example using onscreen realtime graphic
controls.
The upcoming latest version of xAP Desktop will include some great 'on
screen' widgets for controlling lights using realtime faders.

The enhanced features of BSC v13 include (among others)...

Separating Level and State into two distinct parameters
Supporting exact levels eg 32000/65535 rather than just %
levels
Moving the ID parameter to be a parameter value rather than
a parameter name and allowing wildcarding
Supporting an additional 'display string' alongside a state
eg to show 'HIGH'
Multiple endpoints can be addressed simultaneously
(synchronised) using multiple bodies.
Full automatic discovery, tracking, status and control of
all (BSC) endpoint device capabilities and values.

Above all BSC is very simple to implement yet exceedingly powerful
in application.  It permits for example all HomeSeer devices to be
instantly
accessible as xAP devices and all BSC xAP devices to be automatically
detected and integrated within HomeSeer. Non BSC xAP devices are also
automatically supported via a schema file. xAP devices can, and indeed
typically do support both BSC and a more complex schema appropriate to the
device. BSC does 'what it says on the tin' - it is a very simple to
implement yet powerful schema for controlling most devices in a 'basic'
way.
This ease of use and standardisation has permitted the link with MainLobby
to work so seamlessly.

I will be posting the new v1.3 spec to the xAP Developer group and
also including it on the xAP main website www.xapautomation.org in the next
day or so, if you are developing using BSC (and you should be - it's great
!) then please read this document as the spec is significantly different to
BSC v12 and although it is possible to make an application that supports
both we are looking to deprecate v12 and to only support v13 ongoingly.

Kevin