Re: MMIR X-10 Macro IR Module

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"John, SW Missouri" <jmjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1190170544.241820.33770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Hi Bobby,
>
> If you want to contact the seller to see what offers he might
> entertain you can get to him from the listing:
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110168798519
>
> He was asking $199, but received no bids.

Thanks!  I may indeed shoot him an email.

> Considering these sell new for $600 it was a fair price.  In the event
> it needs an upgrade (EPROM) it's only about $15 from
http://www.csi3.com/homevis2.htm

I found that site last night while trying to get a handle on the unit's
capabilities.  I don't think I have a good sense of all the offerings and
capabilities, yet.

> In my opinion the Homevision controller is much easier to program than
> the Ocelot.  I've had both.  I currently use a Homvision Pro and an
> Elk M1G.  I'm still a long way from getting all my home automation
> back up and running.  We're having a new porch put on the back of the
> house and I'm making my own wrought iron railings - which is taking up
> way too much of my time ;-(

I was just watching This Old House and how they fabricate the decorative
wrought iron front stoop stair riser replacements for the old Federal-style
townhouses that are all over DC.  They take one of the remaining good pieces
and trace it with a pantograph attached to a plasma cutter that cuts huge
blank plate so fast it looks like they're cutting balsa wood.  Not an exact
replacement, but pretty darn close.

> You might take down the Homevision manual here and look it over before
> making an offer.
>
> http://www.csi3.com/HOMEVIS/manual.pdf

Thanks!  I was considering buying the manual on Ebay just to get a look-see
but free is much, much better.  (-:

> Because HV is a hybrid looping/event driven controller it can often
> respond more quickly to events like IR or digital/analog inputs.  It
> has many neat features built into the programming to make life easier
> like,
>
> if receive x10 A1 A2 A3 within 5 seconds
>   do whatever
>
> This would be possible, but cumbersome in the Ocelot - and many other
> HA controllers.

I won't rehash my lack of love for CMax and how every conditional I ever
wrote evaluated differently than I had planned.  That experience and the
famously flakey CM11A soured me on the idea of central controller.  But not
nearly as much as they soured my wife!

> For me IR recognition and transmit work flawlessly on the HV, but was
> a pain on the Ocelot.

The biggest problem I had with the Ocelot was IR recognition.  To be fair,
when I got USB IRtrans that provided a hex dump of every IR code it saw, I
had been throwing things at the Ocelot that were non-standard.  At Guy's
suggestion, I extended the learning "press" time to 1 second, but I was
surprised to find out how little a time lag between pressing a remote button
and an action occurring can mess things up.  The user expects the action to
have occurred and presses more buttons and havoc soon ensues.  Strangely
enough, the problem was complicated by Sony commands actually requiring an
ultra-brief learning "press" because of the way their IR commands are
structured.

> I'm not knocking the Ocelot, just pointing out some of the advantages
> HV has.

It's good to know that you've used both and prefer one over the other.  That
makes your critique much more valuable than abstract praise or condemnation.

> I picked up a device similar to your MMIR on eBay awhile back and it's
> sitting on the shelf.  It does NOT have the IR capabilities, just
> macro expansion.  The first thing I didn't like about it is there's no
> way to tell what you have in it and it would be very easy to overwrite
> one macro with another.  The thing I bought is called a Macro Module
> 16 (MACMOD16).  Rumor was that it was made by the people that produce
> the Monterey Signal Analyzer.  It does look very similar to the MSA.

FWIW, I believe this device is also from Monterey and sounds a lot like what
you have with an IR receiver added in.  I assumed from the start that I
would have to document the programming the way I do with learning remotes -
tediously and completely.   I even went so far as to make an audio recording
of how to program the UR24C so that I wouldn't get lost or timed-out during
the process and just push buttons when the voice tells me to, just like my
GPS!

Reprogramming the UR24C's is not a big issue now that I've acquired a stash
of spares from Ebay.  Instead, having to reprogram all 10 of them is the big
issue now, and a main reason why I wanted an "interpreter" device to make
use of the SAT, AUX1 and AUX2 device channels for macros.  I really think
the MMIR is going to do a pretty good job of that when I finally get around
to it.  Various emergencies of one sort or another have eaten up most of
this day already. )-:  What the MMIR doesn't do for me, I expect the USB
IRTrans to eventually fill in.

> See you're thinking your wife can handle the MMIR reprogramming, but
> if you had a Homevision you wouldn't have to worry about resets - it
> just runs and runs ;-)

As a "logistics puke" in another lifetime, I wouldn't sleep at night unless
I had a spare all prepped and ready to swap out.

> If you're turning your outside lighting on/off with mini timers then
> you're wasting electricity.  You need to follow sunrise and sunset to
> do it right ;-)

We've got very bright street lighting here so we don't really turn the
lights on until it's way past sundown.  I've got an Eagle Eye outside behind
the garbage cans that can report dawn and dusk.  The MMIR probably has
enough capacity to take over that function from the mini-timers but it's not
a burning issue since you can read a book on the front porch from the street
lighting alone.

Interestingly enough, the minitimers and my wife got together well from the
start because she had been in charge of dealing with the accursed manual 24
timers with all the pullout tabs.  They work OK, but they really don't allow
for good independent use of the lamp they're connected to.  The early
woodgrain X-10 timers with the blue fluorescent displays looked nicer, but
all four of those failed eventually, although none of the later LED models
have given me any trouble.  So far.  X (fingers crossed)

We originally had three so that all the areas of the house could be reached,
but with the advent of the XTB, we just keep the two that are not "in
season" behind X-10 filters so they retain their programming without running
down the battery but don't send anything to the powerline.

> The Ocelot will do that and I suppose you're using it
> for that purpose.

That was the theory, but after too many days with the lights on and nights
with them off, I realized I would never win the Nobel Prize for CMax
programming.  (-:

> I have compact fluorescents in my post lights which
> stay on all night.  However if someone enters the drive in the middle
> of the night the M1 turns on the 3 lights on the front of the house,
> besides announcing an arrival.  The HV currently does just lighting
> and some temperature recording, oh and it records all security events
> like arming, disarming, alamrs, etc.  It prints these on a POS printer

(I assume that's Point of Sale and not Piece of Scheiss!)  (-:

> - another eBay find.  In my prior install I had quite a few messages
> that would pop up on the TV to remind us to take the garbage out,
> birthdays were coming up, time for medication, etc.  With HV and your
> IR remote you can control all 256 x10 devices, control macros, timers,
> virtually anything in the HV controller can be run with your remote.
> I sound like a salesman for them, but I'm just a happy customer.  I
> have a touchscreen laptop with HomevisionXL ( http://hv.tclcode.com/ )
> running that lets me turn lights, fans, etc on/off with a simple touch
> on a graphical screen that shows what's on.  You can use this same
> touch screen to control your TV or other IR appliances through HV.

Sounds very interesting.  We'll see what Ebay turns up.  I like the idea of
not having to change remotes.  We've got a lot of "finger training" invested
in the UR24C and they seem immune to most anything except the dogs.  (-:

> Bobby - I have to admit that my wife can shoot her p3AT in .380 acp
> way better than me - it hurts my hands.  But I can whip her with any
> other firearm ;-)  She is a good sport though and trys her best with
> everything I teach her.  I'm a .45 fan as well - I particularly like
> my Para Ordnance P13-45 which gives me 14 with one in the snoot.  I
> like Glocks too, but then there aren't many firearms I don't like ;-)

She's adopted the Browning .22 as her own, and it's just as well, although
slightly ironic.  The only real-world use for it is plinking varmints, but
she's too much of an animal lover to ever bring herself to shoot one.  She
learned to shoot a .45 in the Army, but just doesn't have the arm strength
to deal with the recoil.  A rapid-fire range  sequence with the .45 turns
pretty rapidly into an anti-aircraft drill.  (-:  Got a .380 Berretta Model
85 but it's too small for my fat hands and hurts mine as well, especially if
I don't remember to hold it low enough for the top of my well-scarred hand
to clear the slide!   I probably would have been happier with the 84 that
had a larger, double-stacked magazine and hence a larger grip.  It had a
fatal flaw in that it would jam a lot.  The ejection mechanism often didn't
give enough loft to the spent casing and it would get caught.  Reminds me of
the old joke:

 "How do you sink an Italian submarine?

"Knock on the hatch."

Prefer the oldie but goodie Browning HiPower 9mm that has jammed but once in
1,000's of rounds and that was due to some iffy Federal ammo.  It's single
action as opposed to most of today's 9mm's and .40's, but often a situation
can be brought under control by the sound of a slide being pulled back or a
shotgun being pumped.  A single action is, IMHO, a lot less likely to be
involved in accident, at least if it's left without one in the chamber.
That depends on what color the terror alert is at.  (-:  As you may know,
there's a case that began here in DC to repeal their draconian gun control
law that could have nationwide repercussions.  Judging by DC's murder rate,
the law as it stands isn't doing much good.  Today a 14 year old kid was
killed by cops after throwing shots at them with a .45 pistol.  So much for
strict gun control.

> Last comment - send the MMIR back and put $100 with it and buy the
> Homevision.

John, I shall consider it!  Do you think it would be simple to have HV
function as a broadcast storm detector and sound an alert when more than 30
seconds of X-10 commands had been recorded?  That would really be a big
selling point for me.  Oddly enough, it may be that the MMIR is obsolete.
Not too many places seem to sell them.

Thanks for the detailed response, John.  I appreciate it.

--
Bobby G.