Newbie to xPL

["Tom Van den Bon" <tvdbon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Guys,

I discovered xPL yesterday and I'm very amazed at the possibilities of
it. I sat up most of the night playing with a hub and even writing a
small utility to log schema messages. I'm doing everything under linux
using the xPL4Linux tools and framework and it works like a dream. I
have started with Home Automation this year and I actually prefer to
make my own custom software (which has been hardwork, but very
satisfying). I do however have some questions and things I want to
confirm:

* You need a hub for every pc with different xPL applications running.
For windows, I tried the xPL monkey hub and for linux the xPLhub. Both
works very nicely. Now, the xPLHal and the xPLHal Manager is actually
not a hub but a service doing all kinds of events depending on
incoming messages? and the xPLHal Manager is used to configure the
xPLHal service? Is there such a service for Linux (because if there
isn't one then I'm seriously considering developing one).

* Are there any python libraries available for working with xPL ?

* A xPL device gateway communicates with a connected device and sends
xPL messages according to the device status and also handles incoming
messages?

* I also started on a xPL - K8000 gateway(?) last night, does
something like this exist or can I continue.

* what is the difference between xAP and xPL?

* I saw that there is xPL messages for sending configuration messages,
how does that work?

I'll probably have alot more questions in the next couple of days, but
I'm glad I found this and I would like to improve linux applications
and features for xpl as it seems very minimal (?).

Thanks,
Tom