RE: Topic 1: Base Level Status Schema

[Kevin Hawkins]

Hi Ian

I re-read my post of last night & I am conscious that we appear to
be battling a little bit here on the xAP Dev list re this 'basic' status
&
control issue. The last bit of my post came over particularly badly when I
looked at it again. I just wanted you to know that I am not trying to be
awkward re this in any way, emails tend to sometimes appear terse. I know
you are tight for space in your processor, and perhaps more importantly
have
already coded things differently - indeed I have too on the C-Bus side but
I
perhaps have the luxury of a larger codespace and RAM. What I am trying to
get is feedback and suggestions from everyone and a workable policy layer.
The issue I am trying to address is that we are both actually
producing very similar devices and are very close to having first versions
in the field. I think your firmware upgrades require processor swaps so it
is important that we try and get things right at the offset. It would be
nice if theses pioneer products could extol the virtues of xAP by doing
things in a standard way, having some form of basic status and control
would
facilitate this. Allowing HomeSeer say to recognise and control the device
without needing an IanB/KevinH plugin I see as a measure of how well we
achieve this. It is actually quite difficult for a device controller
developer to add xAP support as xAP in itself is so all encompassing in
it's
scope. The question of 'what exactly do I need to add to support xAP ?' is
a
good one -and this addresses it at a simple device level.
If we all do things - 'our own way' then true it can all be hooked
up together but we will need to involve the intermediary controller
application that will take an IanB.status message and convert it to a
KevinH.status format and one of the cornerstones for the creation of xAP is
lost.
Patrick's view of xAP ( I believe) is one of very much being able to
achieve point to point interaction between devices - to this extent -
(perhaps optimistically) I had envisaged we might be able to get to a
situation where an input change on your relay board switched a C-Bus load
and a switch on C-Bus could control the sprinklers. That would be really
nice. However I don't want my board to need to specifically support an IanB
board and I am sure the reverse is true. So we need some communality in
status and control.
It may be (indeed IS) that such support is optional in that it is
not in the 1.2 spec - although we are not changing anything in the protocol
- just adding policy layers. But I do feel, at this stage in our product
cycles, if we make the effort to address this issue in a similar way then
the end user experience of xAP is much enhanced. I certainly shall be
adopting whatever the group reaches agreement on to address this issue.

K