| ECS-L Home Automation and Security Archives |
| Subject: From: Date: | RE: [ECS] ECS X-10 Interface... Dan Hoehnen Tue, 5 Jan 1999 11:36:00 -0500 (EST) |
Jim, HV has to connect to a pc via a serial port, it does not support a lan connection. I have developed a home automation program called ACE that might help. ACE is designed to let pc's in your house on a network (or across the internet) communicate with each other and share resources. Ace supports both HV and ECS, but I'm not sure it would do what you need because I am not sure hoe ecs handles getting data from hv. But, I will run down what a typical installation would look like and maybe you or Mark and tohers could help decide if it would work. Install the ace server on your ecs pc. Install the ace client on the pc in your kids room. Connect HV to a serial port (say 2) on the kids pc. Configure the ace client to monitor port 2 and forward everything to the ace server, which could then send it to ecs. The one gotcha here is that the client can forward to the server, but not specifically to ecs. There is an otpion in the client to send it to ecs, but it is not yet implemented. I think it would be a very easy change on my part to enable this option. Now, ecs needs to talk to hv on the kids pc. You can do this no problem from your own schedule in ecs since you can send a command from ecs to the ace server that tells the ace server to send a string out any serial port on the server pc or any client pc. So, you could just put together a string with the command to send to hv and then send it to ace to be forwarded to the right port hv is connected to. But, since ecs expects hv to be connected to a serial port on the same pc as ecs and a port that ecs has control of, I'm not sure if all the built in ecs functionality for hv can be routed to ace for forwarding on to hv on the client pc. Mark, maybe you can help here. You can get more info on ace at my url in my sig below. I have both ecs users and hv users on the ace mailing list so you could probably get some ideas there too if you decide to pursue this route. You can also download fully functional version from the web site. On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Devlin wrote: > I actually have an Ethernet connection from my computer and hub to my kids > computer, which is right next to where I would want to put the HV box. So I > could put another hub at my kids computer and connect it to the HV box. Can > you easily use ECS to work with the HV box over a LAN? Can you connect HV > to a LAN? > > Thanks, > Jim Devlin > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ingo Pakleppa [mailto:ipakleppa@home.com] > Sent: Monday, January 04, 1999 10:28 AM > To: ecs-list@netbloc.com > Cc: ecs-list@netbloc.com > Subject: Re: [ECS] ECS X-10 Interface... > > I'm not sure what kind of connection Home Vision uses - is it serial? If it > is, I believe 150 feet is still within the specifications of a regular > RS232 - I'm not positive, though. Furthermore, not all serial ports provide > the necessary voltage that the RS232 specification calls for. Nowadays, > it's almost unusual to have the full + and - 12 volts. Twisted pair will > probably work. It wasn't invented for serial-port use, but nowadays is > fairly commonly used for that purpose. So, bottom line, my *guess* is that > 150 feet should work, but you won't know for sure until you try it. > > You CANNOT use a LAN hub unless you have an actual LAN connection; hubs > only work if traffic occurs at the specified 10 MBit per second. They have > some circuitry in them that relies on this. > > Ingo > Dan Hoehnen dhoehnen@infinet.com He who dies with the most toys, wins! ************************************************************************* * Home Automation Index: http://www.infinet.com/~dhoehnen/ha/list.html * * * * ACE Home Automation Software - Supports HomeVision, ECS and most * * other automation systems - Caller ID, Text-to-Speech, Internet * * and intranet support, Touchscreen support, much more... * * * * Port16.ocx & Port32.ocx - Give Visual Basic access to I/O ports * * * * http://www.infinet.com/~dhoehnen/software/ * *************************************************************************