RE: Netiom-xAP

["David Pullen" <dpullen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob
Glad to hear it is all going well now. I can understand why you have had
to ask on the forum and I am sure everyone is happy to help. As you can
probably tell, I am not exactly an expert on xAP myself. Sometimes it
takes a bit of fiddling about to get things right. We actually spent
quite a lot of time during the beta testing looking at the netiom schema
as there are many different ways in which it could have been
implemented. There are also some errors in the netiom documentation that
mean it can be a bit tricky to work out exactly what to do. Having said
that, I think Roy put a lot of work into getting the netiom xAP out the
door with only limited expectations of a return on investment. I think
it is going to take a little while before all the issues are ironed out.

I think you are right that it would assist to have more examples of the
different messages and perhaps that is something we can help do.
BTW I am intending to do some electricity monitoring myself and I was
planning to use the netiom. Are you using your existing meter or have
you installed a new meter? If it is a new meter, I would be interested
to know what it is and where it can be obtained as I am still looking at
the different options.

Best Regards
David

-----Original Message-----
From: xap_automation@xxxxxxx
[mailto:xap_automation@xxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Robert Kearns
Sent: 05 July 2005 20:19
To: xap_automation@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [xap_automation] Netiom-xAP

Hi Dave & Kevin,

Thanks for the responses.

The device is a great bit of kit its just that as a new user is
difficult to work out the message formats. The examples in the
included documentation are not very clear so I've had to ask on this
forum, maybe more explicit examples would help. I don't mean to
criticise only hoping to make it easier for novices to use.

Kevin, I tried blanking out the input name for the electricity meter,
works a treat. The amount of traffic in itself isn't a problem. It's
just easier to debug and monitor messages through the hub etc, when
there isn't a constant stream of message especially when the kettle is
turned on :-).

In light of Roys response I think the overflow handling is correct.
I'd actually already implemented his recommendation of reset the
counter before it overflows. I now read the counter for the
electricity meter every minute and reset if once it reaches 32,000,
which is all to quickly.

Rob