johnnynine
Active Member
Leviton has released serial protocol documentation to the public. It's less than desirable and needs some severe proof reading but it does contain some good information.
Vizia RF windows application ready for testing
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Leviton has released serial protocol documentation to the public. It's less than desirable and needs some severe proof reading but it does contain some good information.
johnnynine
Active Member
Just a reminder for those of you with the beta, you must have Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 installed or it won't run at all.
shenandoah75
Active Member
Got my package early today and have it up and running... I keep getting this generic error but its are intermittent and the app doesn't shut down when it happens which is awesome! The comm seems slow, but i'm in my outbuilding. Maybe it's having to route through nodes to get here - hoping it improves when i test form the house tonight...
Some questions:
1) So basically a group here is equivelent to a group how elk defines them (and totalley separate) from scenes/zones?
2) Right now my 4 button scene controllers show no status. Will there be a way to fire scenes on specific devices from serial commands ( i will check the ascii protocol later, though your prior commentary has me worried) or is this only available via groups?
3) my 1 zone controllers show up as scene controllers for the class. Is this correct? They show no status right now - will test on / off at the house...
btw what version of the protocol doc do you have? i have 1.1. (10/9/2007)
-brad
Some questions:
1) So basically a group here is equivelent to a group how elk defines them (and totalley separate) from scenes/zones?
2) Right now my 4 button scene controllers show no status. Will there be a way to fire scenes on specific devices from serial commands ( i will check the ascii protocol later, though your prior commentary has me worried) or is this only available via groups?
3) my 1 zone controllers show up as scene controllers for the class. Is this correct? They show no status right now - will test on / off at the house...
btw what version of the protocol doc do you have? i have 1.1. (10/9/2007)
-brad
johnnynine
Active Member
Retrieving the names is slow and retrieving the initial node levels is quicker. This is highly defendant on your network and what it is doing at the time- some nodes return very quickly, some are slow.
1 - yes and no.. the groups are defined as Leviton Vizia RF defines them for use with the RZC0P, it's not an Elk thing... but Elk does assign a range of elk lighting id's to control those group ids.
2-Controller's do not have a status - or level, only relay switches, dimmers, thermostats, etc. I have not yet implemented any "send" scene support in the application yet. It does however support receiving scene information though (although it doesn't show it in the gui, it knows it in the background). This is a pretty low priority but I suppose I could make it so you would just select a group or select some nodes and indicate which scene you want to activate on them and the fade rate... but you have no way of knowing if that scene is actually associated with the node(s). -- at least from the Vizia RF docs.
3 - yes this is correct. Check the Dev Properties in the primary remote and you will see the same.
I have v1.2 of the protocol docs from the viziarf.com web site. or are you referring to the RZC0P firmware?
I made some more changes early this morning so I hope to get another version up tonight or tomorrow. I've seen some locks ups as well, so let me know if you experience that.
Johnny
I'm still a bit confused on how all this stuff works together to tie Vizia into the Elk. I am correct in my thinking that the steps that would be required are:
1) Get an M1XSP and load the Vizia Firmware
2) Connect an RZC0P to a laptop and run Johnny 9's application to "learn" the Vizia network and load it into ElkRP
3) Connect the RZC0P to the M1XSP
4) Write rules in ElkRP to automate the lighting
Would you then need to redo staps 2 and 3 each time you added devices, or created Vizia scenes? Will the Elk be able to respond to Vizia state changes in it's even lanugage, so you could say, email when a Vizia switch is turned on?
1) Get an M1XSP and load the Vizia Firmware
2) Connect an RZC0P to a laptop and run Johnny 9's application to "learn" the Vizia network and load it into ElkRP
3) Connect the RZC0P to the M1XSP
4) Write rules in ElkRP to automate the lighting
Would you then need to redo staps 2 and 3 each time you added devices, or created Vizia scenes? Will the Elk be able to respond to Vizia state changes in it's even lanugage, so you could say, email when a Vizia switch is turned on?
johnnynine
Active Member
The software provides two features of use with the Elk M1.
1. The convenience of not having to type all the node and group information into ElkRP, the software can discover the network for you and export it to a file that can be imported into ElkRP. This is optional and purely a convenience feature.
2. You can create groups in the RZC0P which can be accessed by the Elk M1. So for instance you could create a group of nodes with the software called "1st Floor". This actually writes the group information to the RZC0P (not the name though). Then you can control that group via the Elk M1 rules, such as turn off all lights in group #1.
Groups are optional, however if you want to control more than one light with one rule, they are the way to go.
So the order would be:
1) Get an M1XSP and load the Vizia Firmware
2) Connect an RZC0P to a computer and run Johnnynine's application to "learn" the Vizia network.
3) Use Johnnynine's application to program groups into the RZC0P.
4) Export the data to a file and import into ElkRP.
5) Connect the RZC0P to the M1XSP
6) Write rules in ElkRP to automate individual lights or groups of lights.
I hope this helps.
edit: typos
shenandoah75
Active Member
So Spanky, where are we on the elk portions ? I'm more then happy to take beta/pre-beta
shenandoah75
Active Member
Some more feedback::
1) This one time i had the app up, i tried changing level manually and tabbing out resulted in - this was consistent, but restarting seemed to have removed the issue:
Failed: Queue Empty
And totally not important but just me trying to find stuff:
2) try to manually enter ON (or a numeric value) for a scene controller and tab out:
Following Exception occurred in the DataGridView...
The text following the next line of "System Exception" part is user friendly, but in my opinion would be nice to supress te rest
But then you get a second popup after ok'ing the first:
"Allowable range is 0-99 Paremeter Name Level"
So that's a bit misleading since i enered a value between 0-00 (the first error is really the correct one)
...
The menu allows me to highlight such a controller and turn on/off though... (but doesn't do anything)
3) I got this "queue empty" message as noted in #1 in other places (too like network rediscovery) - that was the first time it actually closed the app for an error too... (but not after restarting)
4) I'd like to have right click context menues (on the individual node rows and on the groups)
5) i'd like the main node table sortable by any of the five columns (asc/desc)
6) no underscores for the menu shortkeys... (but they functionally work)
7) i'm sure this is not a limitation of your program, but vizia's rxcop / protocol, but the names for the handheld remote ( i have an older basic version), the elk, and the rzcop are all null...
8) would be nice if the level change wan't always immediate after tabbing out. This would be more important in a standalone H/A usage, not what i'll se it for. But for example, if i turn group 1 off. And i want to set the levels at which to turn them back on at, it's instantaneous. Might be some cases you want to wait for a seperate on command...
9) do/will groups support relative level changes to the entire group?
Anyway i'm totally nitpicking. The app works as advertised and you are the man for writing it! i just want that elk firmware to take advantage of it
FYI on positive note, i tested the following and it works well: I had a failed node (i pulled out a 1 zone controller and replaced with a scene) That device was pulled into RZCOP/your program despite no ability to communicate with it. When i use "remove failed' from the handheld remote, i updated the rzcop succesfully, restarted the app, and ran a rediscovery ( which btw seems to be successful and i don't get the "empty queue" error if i update the rzcop before executing that)
1) This one time i had the app up, i tried changing level manually and tabbing out resulted in - this was consistent, but restarting seemed to have removed the issue:
Failed: Queue Empty
And totally not important but just me trying to find stuff:
2) try to manually enter ON (or a numeric value) for a scene controller and tab out:
Following Exception occurred in the DataGridView...
The text following the next line of "System Exception" part is user friendly, but in my opinion would be nice to supress te rest
But then you get a second popup after ok'ing the first:
"Allowable range is 0-99 Paremeter Name Level"
So that's a bit misleading since i enered a value between 0-00 (the first error is really the correct one)
...
The menu allows me to highlight such a controller and turn on/off though... (but doesn't do anything)
3) I got this "queue empty" message as noted in #1 in other places (too like network rediscovery) - that was the first time it actually closed the app for an error too... (but not after restarting)
4) I'd like to have right click context menues (on the individual node rows and on the groups)
5) i'd like the main node table sortable by any of the five columns (asc/desc)
6) no underscores for the menu shortkeys... (but they functionally work)
7) i'm sure this is not a limitation of your program, but vizia's rxcop / protocol, but the names for the handheld remote ( i have an older basic version), the elk, and the rzcop are all null...
8) would be nice if the level change wan't always immediate after tabbing out. This would be more important in a standalone H/A usage, not what i'll se it for. But for example, if i turn group 1 off. And i want to set the levels at which to turn them back on at, it's instantaneous. Might be some cases you want to wait for a seperate on command...
9) do/will groups support relative level changes to the entire group?
Anyway i'm totally nitpicking. The app works as advertised and you are the man for writing it! i just want that elk firmware to take advantage of it
FYI on positive note, i tested the following and it works well: I had a failed node (i pulled out a 1 zone controller and replaced with a scene) That device was pulled into RZCOP/your program despite no ability to communicate with it. When i use "remove failed' from the handheld remote, i updated the rzcop succesfully, restarted the app, and ran a rediscovery ( which btw seems to be successful and i don't get the "empty queue" error if i update the rzcop before executing that)
johnnynine
Active Member
shenandoah75, That's a great list, thanks.
I'll take a look at the bug reports.
I also don't receive the names of the Primary Controller or the RZC0P.
Your gui enhancement requests have been noted and I agree with most or all of them, but my first priority is the underlying protocol portion and stability.
I found a whacky stability issue that has plagued me for the last couple days. Maybe it's just my Vista 64bit machine, but the .Net System.Text.StringBuilder.Append() class can totally crash the application when adding to it at random times, even when wrapping it in a critical section/thread safe section... so I stopped using it in this application.
I'll be posting an update tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks,
Johnny
edit: typo
I'll take a look at the bug reports.
I also don't receive the names of the Primary Controller or the RZC0P.
Your gui enhancement requests have been noted and I agree with most or all of them, but my first priority is the underlying protocol portion and stability.
I found a whacky stability issue that has plagued me for the last couple days. Maybe it's just my Vista 64bit machine, but the .Net System.Text.StringBuilder.Append() class can totally crash the application when adding to it at random times, even when wrapping it in a critical section/thread safe section... so I stopped using it in this application.
I'll be posting an update tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks,
Johnny
edit: typo
I cannot find this info on their website. Do you have a link to it? I am hoping someone will hack a linux/python interface to it.
*EDIT* Nevermind. I found it. It is under "integration" on the documentation site.
http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctD...;minisite=10024
Or start with:
http://www.viziarf.com/documents
and click on integration.
Thanks!
P.K.
johnnynine
Active Member
When I get the ViziaRF API rock solid, I'll try compiling it on Linux with Mono. Unfortunately Mono has some gaps in the .Net Framework implementation so we'll just have to wait and see.
johnnynine
Active Member
A new beta build is ready for the beta testers.
I made some enhancements to the GUI like dimming and brightening, setting node levels, and some shortcut keys. Fairly minor stuff, but it's there if you want to take a look. I also changed the version to 0.99.2.0 to identify it as a beta.
Thanks,
Johnny
I made some enhancements to the GUI like dimming and brightening, setting node levels, and some shortcut keys. Fairly minor stuff, but it's there if you want to take a look. I also changed the version to 0.99.2.0 to identify it as a beta.
Thanks,
Johnny
johnnynine
Active Member
Update, rebuilt to 0.99.3.0 for major startup bug fix.
Thanks for the explanation. The "new generation" of lighting has a lot more moving pieces than the old X10 days, so I am still getting my brain around everything. Assuming your program can export XML to a format that ElkRP can use to create lights and groups in its database, is that the "missing link" that would get Vizia support into ElkRP, or is there more to it than that?
johnnynine
Active Member
Thats really a question for Elk but I believe they may have some more work to do on both ElkRP and the Vizia RF firmware.
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