Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] Support from Hardware Vendors Steve Letkeman Mon, 20 Nov 2000 09:43:50 -0800

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I saw this post and wanted to add a few comments and questions.
I sell a number of I/O boards, parallel and ISA and I also am a
home automation buff.  One of my goals in my home automation
setup is to have a PC controlling everything without a ton of
hardware interfaces inside the PC and a zillion wires running in and out of
it
for the simple reason that, if it dies, I would like to plug in a
replacement very quickly and easily without swapping out a
bunch of cards.  Ideally, I could plug in my laptop and run
the same program and have it working in minutes while I
am fixing the PC.  Or maybe even have two PC's in a redundant
setup.
   I have been doing a lot of network stuff with CAN and am
hoping to open up some of my HA projects to other people when
I have a chance to document some of the things I've done and
when my protocol is finalized a bit more.  My latest commercial
device is a USB to CAN converter which brings me to me real
point of this long winded post.  How many ECS users are running
on a platform that supports USB?  This seems like the best way
to add hardware that is easily interfaced to by user software,
is compatible on a number of different PC's (much better than
parallel ports that are still not very compatible, especially on
laptops) and can easily provide a gateway to an HA network like
CAN or RS-485.  If your PC does provide USB, could you see
yourselve just adding a number of USB boards within a few feet
of the PC or would you still want a network of nodes?

Steve
Zanthic Technologies Inc. located at    http://www.zanthic.com
Controller Area Network boards for HC11, 8051, AVR & ISA/PC104 and Parallel
I/O boards for ISA and Parallel, Win95/98 and NT drivers included

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Brown" <nbrown@thystonius.com>
To: "ECS UserList (E-mail)" <ecs-list@netbloc.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 10:35 AM
Subject: [ECS] Support from Hardware Vendors


Hi All,
Mark has been doing a great job implementing new items in ECS.
When I look back through the email list I see many occasions where
things get added and work out well.  After working with Mark and going
through this process I see how much nicer is would be for Mark if he had
access to the hardware.  We all have at least a couple pieces of
hardware, from a couple different vendors.  It wouldn't take that long
to draft an email to the hardware vendor stating what hardware we use
with ECS, and since it is in their best interest to have support for
their hardware in ECS that they should provide Omnipotence with a piece
of test hardware.  It is in all our best interests to keep ECS up to
date with all the current stuff.  Below is a list of several hardware
vendors and their email addresses.

Applied Digital (ADI) adiinfo@appdig.com
JDS Technologies onlinejds@aol.com
HomeVision csi@csi3.com
Marrick (Lynx10) general@marrickltd.com
SmartLinc inbox@smartlinc.com
Enerzone jwf@enerzone.com
HAI sales@homeauto.com
Hapco salesinfo@napcosecurity.com

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