Re: xAP HomeSeer plugin

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

BSC is 'Basic Status and Control' which is a xAP universal schema
for controlling simple devices (binary/level/text values).  One of the
great advantages of BSC is that it is close to plug and play between xAP
devices that support it - and it has rudimentary discovery of devices
and their capabilities.  It's disadvantage is that it doesn't richly
describe the capabilities of a device - here you would use more
functionally descriptive schema like 'whole house audio' 'security'
'weather' or something.

The great synergy between HomeSeer and xAP BSC is that devices
created in HomeSeer are very close to BSC in style. We thus allow a
native HomeSeer device to be presented to xAP as a BSC device which
means its status can be seen by all xAP devices and it can be controlled
by all xAP devices. That is what selecting 'BSC' does - it connects the
device to xAP using BSC.   xAP FloorPlan for example works very well
with BSC devices.    HomeSeer additionally has its own schema called
'HomeSeer' and this schema has more information within it but is not
universally recognised like BSC.  Enabling the 'HomeSeer' schema again
allows the device to be visible and controllable from the xAP network
but only by using the HomeSeer schema. You can enable xAP and HomeSeer
schema support independently.  If you have no need for the HS device to
be accessible to your xAP network then you would enable neither of these
options, which reduces xAP network traffic and overhead. If you wanted
to see a HS device in xAP FloorPlan then enabling BSC for that device is
a good route.

The above relates to HS native devices - those that are inbuilt in
HS eg X10 and those that can be added via HS plugins, it does not apply
to devices that are created from xAP using the xAP plugin, as these are
already present on the xAP network anyway.

K



Paul Gale wrote:
>
> I?m not quite sure what the BSC and HomeSeer round icons actually mean
> and when I should enable/disable them in the Devices tab of the xAP HS
> plugin. Can someone explain please?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul.
>
>