Lighting Protocol Question

[harleydude]

I have been working on a Elk plug-in for Girder and am now at the stage of incorporating lighting control. After reading through the protocol docs and with my own personal experience of adding rules to the Elk, that determining the proper way to setup a lighting device and the commands to use to control it vary from device to device. I am wondering how other developers are handling this situation. A few examples, strictly X10 for now.

Appliance Modules can be turned on or off.
Dimmable devices can be tunred on, off or dimmed. The type of dimming command is different depending how the device is configured within the Elk programming.

How are others interfacing with the Elk handling sending the right commands to the Elk to get the device to respond in the correct manner?

I wonder if a command to indicate the lighting device type, similar to being able to determine how a zone is configured, could be included in the protocol.

Thanks
Rick

 

[noshali]

I am using x10 and a couple upb device...directly connected to the elk (no computer involved)

x10 is x10 and upb is awesome. You are correct in your assumption of what each module/switch is capable of. I am surprised that Martin hasn't been able to convince you to go UPB. I am glad he convinced me...works like a charm and no issues what so ever.

No protocol needed for this stuff....they just respond to commands and elk just provides an interface for 2 way communication. so for eg x10 wil receive and send x10 from elk provied you use the correct module. I use PSC05 that plugs directly into elk (no need for serial port expanders) upd needs one.

regards,

 

[harleydude]

I will be moving to UPB sometime after the holidays. However, even within the UPB world there exists varying devices with different capabilities, dimming and non dimming switches, plug-in appliance module and relays. All with unique methods of controlling.

What I am really looking for is a method to allow external applications communicating with the Elk to be able to determine what commands to send to the Elk to be able to control the various types of lighting devices that are connected. If I setup a device with Elk RP to be a Standard:On/Off Switch and then write a rule for that device, Elk RP knows that the device can only be turned on or off.

Maybe I have missed something in the protocol docs??? Is there a command similar to the zone definition command for determining lighting types?

Rick

 

[Steve]

Rick,

If you are staying withing the Elk, then the rules all work properly based on the config. If you use another app with an Elk driver then the driver is setup to know what types they are. If you are building your own stuff you would simply need to setup the driver correctly. I know in CQC there were some possible gotchas, so the driver is setup again in CQC. In other words, in CQC driver you define what is on/off vs dim. Don't know if that really helps, but I'm not sure what you're trying to do.

 

[harleydude]

Thanks Steve

That is how I managed things in my Elk driver previously, was hoping that since the controller is aware of the types that it could pass it on to any external drivers to reduce the need for duplicating information.

Rick