Re: roZetta Status

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

It should work with HomeVision but hasn't been tested with any of the
controllers yet. I haven't given up on persuading the author of ZBasic to
improve his X-10 support. If I'm successful with him, then I'm sure it will
work with any controller that now works with a TW523 or equivalent. Once he
sees my code, I think he may see the light (pun intended) - it's really
simple - the only glitch I've had to deal with is the occasionally laggard
ZBasic interrupts.

Is the Clipsal protocol free? I had an opportunity to play with some of
their RF gear and was impressed with the quality so I think folks will be
happy when Square-D makes CBUS available here. Since it hasn't been
available here I haven't tried to keep up with the details.

Do they have any type of serial gateway? If so and there is either an ASCII
protocol or a free communications protocol, then I can probably control it.
Since it will soon be available here it's worth exploring.

ASCII will work now - if I have to write any code for a non-ASCII protocol
then I cannot promise anything until I see details. Anything that takes a
lot of codespace is probably out and any protocol that isn't free is
definitely out - I get by on a disability pension and will be lucky if I
recover my development costs and it will tale a _LOT_ of boards to do even
that - I can't pay license fees.

If the protocol is available then there's a possibility I could do a PIC
based module for CBUS that would interface with roZetta over roZetta's RS485
bus. That moves it out of roZetta's codespace and allows for more
flexibility but that is speculation and would be much longer range.

Another possibility would be to interact with them using RF but they do some
funky things with RF which would make that a much tougher job.

A brief look at the link you gave is not encouraging. The license for the
high level protocol (C-Gate) sounds very expensive. The Windows DLL or Linux
drivers for embedded systems are not applicable. The ZX-40 only has about
0.0000000000000000000000000001% of that kind of computing horsepower.

I think a serial gateway with an ASCII protocol will be the only viable
option. I don't have the time right now to go Googling but the Pascal
Automation Controller PDF mentions "RS232 strings". If there are other CBUS
controller devices that can accept "RS232 strings" as input, roZetta can
work with that.

BTW, for lurkers, Jeff got the quote for pre-machined enclosures and it's
quite reasonable so he is likely to offer them as well. He's exploring
whether the openings for the ethernet module and antenna connector can be
machined as vee-grooved knockouts since both are optional.

Frank Mc Alinden <Frank.Mc.Alinden.2dec43@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>Hi Guys
>
>Dave thanks for the  feedback much appreciated.........
>
>If i can use it with Homevision and CBUS  i would be very interested in
>purchasing a Rozetta.......
>
>Dave its possible to get the open prootocol for the CBUS rs232
>interface ...
>Check out the link.......
>
>http://www.cbus-enabled.com/cbus-open.htm
>
>HTH
>Frank