Re: Re: Wildcarding query

[Kevin Hawkins <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Buckley wrote:

>--- In xAP_developer@xxxxxxx, Johan Helsingius <yahoo@j...>
wrote:
>
>
>>Ideally things like X10 gateways should be transparent - so
>>that another component sends a message to turn on a light instead
>>of a message to an x10 interface.
>>
>>
>
>Trouble is, X10 is ubiquitous, so it was inevitable that it would end
>up with a schema.
>
>
Yes - really the idea of a schema is to represent a function eg
'lighting' and there would be a lighting schema that worked
transparently with X10 or C-Bus or Dynalite etc - indeed my C-Bus
controller uses three schema - a C-Bus one which is really only for
sending direct C-bus commands, BSC as the general purpose catch all
which allow sit to be plug and play with all other xAP BSC applications
- plus an early form of a lighting schema that adds things like ramp times.

X10 is a headache in that as David says it is ubiquitous and therefore
an X10 schema appeared for legacy support, particularly for X10
controller applications.  It really shouldnt have its own schema - as
indeed most 'specific' devices shouldn't .  Aside from the device naming
of A1 A2 it is really problematic in that it (mostly) doesn't have
status, or even end point presence detection, the nature of loads cant
be determined eg dimmer/appliance and it occasionally misses commands,
plus all dims are relative, this makes state tracking very awkward. Add
the several different 'enhanced X10' specs and the different ways people
have implemented it eg ON at 100% vs preset dim level and it really
becomes awkward to model.

Johan Helsingius <yahoo@j...> wrote:
>This
>goes back to the old issue about distributed vs. non-distributed - do
>you have one central place that "knows" everything about your
topology,
>or are all the components independent. As far as I see, xAP leans
>towards the latter, but "hardwiring" gateway addresses and
other
>topology information defeats this.



If you name your devices appropriately in xAP and action things based on
functionality (eg use a  lighting schema) then it really doesnt matter
where on a network your xAP applications sit - they will continue to
work without reconfiguration, even if you move them . There is no need
to configure gateway addresses in xAP and there is no network topology
to get in the way as xAP is broadcast in nature.   Having a way to
remotely configure applications  from one central location is obviously
a desireable thing....      Expect a proposal on this very soon...
(along with a formalised groups and scenes)

Johan,   tell us a little more about what you have done with xAP  -
always interested...

Kevin