Re: Misterhouse xPL Mods (was RE: New User questions re Hardware interface and what protocol.)

[Gregg Liming <gregg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the explanation below; I'll comment in-line.  However, my
original response was based on a comment that I thought that you made
that suggested that MH's xPL hub implementation was flawed/lacking.  I'm
most motivated to resolving "bugs" and then on to enhancements as
I
believe are described below.  Are there xPL hub problem(s)?

Quoting Ian Lowe (1/23/05 7:09 AM):
> Firstly, we need to know what services misterhouse can provide to an
xPL
> network? Does it behave in a similar way to something like homevision,
> and allow the user to present information from within misterhouse
> scripts to the rest of the network, and similarly, provide a set of
> "commands" that can be carried out by misterhouse in
response to an xPL
> message?

I'm not familiar w/ homevision--so, I can't respond to the specific
analog.  But, yes, it does/can perform along the lines that you mention.
The only MH use of xPL that I'm familiar w/ is as a "consumer" or
"sender" of xPL messages--performing a role functionally similar
to
xPLHal's determinator capability.  I don't recall any interface that
exposes MH capabilities/services to xPL.  Not that one couldn't be
easily implemented; but most of the xPL use in MH is as a MH user
wanting to leverage xPL services that may not exist (or want to be
distributed)--not the other way around.

> This information is needed as an xml fragment - John B produced a
really
> good guideline on doing this, (not to hand right now... John?) the xml
> fragment allows smart configuration of any device.

I'll respond separately to John's comments.

> I don't know if you are penguin only.. If you have a windows box
> available, it would be worth installing xplhal and xplhal manager just
> to see what I am describing.

I have xplhal and the manager installed (as well as many other xpl
services such as xplrionet) and do see what you're describing.

> Secondly is how we can use misterhouse as a home controller from an
xpl
> point of view... xPLHal is the windows scripting engine which performs
> configuration of xpl apps/devices and acts as a central intelligence
on
> the network. This is windows only, and we are sorely missing a linux
> alternative. Clearly misterhouse could act as this controller - in
which
> case, it would be great if the user experience was the same in both
> respects.

Getting MH to be able to be controlled/init'd via XHCP would provide
that identical user experience.  But, perhaps an interim solution is
exposing MH services to xPL--which as mentioned above would be pretty
trivial to implement.  Is there a somewhat "generic"
control/command
schema in which a reference to some MH function could be inserted?  I'm
guessing that this would be the same as whatever is used to externally
(via xPL) start a determinator script.

> If a misterhouse module could be written that supported XHCP, then a
> user could use xplhal manager from a windows desktop to control either
> xplhal on windows or misterhouse on linux.

This sounds more ambitious.  I'll defer comment until I can get my head
fully around XHCP.

Gregg


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