Re: Stupid home non-automation product

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:39:41 -0400, "Robert Green"
<ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<RJWdnZcJfLje-2jYnZ2dnUVZ_rWnnZ2d@xxxxxxx>:

>"Jeff Volp" <JeffVolp@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2_XIh.138275
>
><stuff snipped>
>
>> After writing programs since FORTRAN and hand-assembled machine code
>> (including counting in both directions in hexadecimal), I did find C-max
>> somewhat challenging at first because of its structure.  However, simple
>> time-based functions are easy in C-Max.  The documentation provides good
>> examples, and the ADI users group is extremely helpful for people who
run
>> into problems.
>
>Despite the excellent help available from ADI users, I found it hard to
>implement something I never felt I was in "intellectual control" of.  I am
>glad to read that someone with as much programming experience as you felt
>C-Max was a challenge.  I know it works very well and reliably for those
>willing to master it, but I'm hoping the IR232 is going to make learning
>C-Max academic for me.
>
>There were a couple of technical blips as well as C-Max, the most limiting
>being the IR recognition issues I ran into.  I solved them, with help from
>the ADI group by using 1 second long button presses, but that turned out
>to increase the time lag from recognition to action a little too long to
>really be acceptable.

I 'suspect' (in local parlance) that some of the recommendations for the
Ocelot and CPU-XA came from folks that never actually programmed them,
using them (if at all) as dumb I/O to a PC by querying and controlling port
status via RS-232.

Last I knew, for example, the Homeseer plug-in does not program the Ocelot.
HomeSeer has to relinquish the RS-232 port so that in can be programmed
with C-Max.

This is in contrast to the far more powerful approach taken by Elk and
Savoy in which the same CyberHouse HA program running on the PC that was
used to create all the other rules also wrote PIC machine code from the
user's  point-and-click rule-making that was then downloaded to the Elk
Magic MM443s modules, stored and executed. Once the code is loaded, the
MM443 can run either standalone or communicating (as with the Ocelot).

It will be interesting to see whether software available for the Elk M1G
and presumed successor the M2 has/will catch up with the ~1999 capabilities
of Elk CyberHouse (I dunno).

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org