Having some time off work allowed me to tackle another project that was sadly gathering some dust ... Kevin Hawkins CBUS Gateway..
The CBUS Gateway connects between Homvision and CBUS and keeps track of all CBUS loads levels and much more...This removes a lot of work from Homevision as there is a lot of traffic in a CBUS system...
In my current setup im able to tx CBUS commands using the macro system ...I use xPL to keep track of light levels by using Homevision variables....But I much prefer not to rely on a pc so im happy that the Gateway will keep track of my light levels....
Being a little wary of having to do firmware upgrades for the Gateway I decided to try it out first on my test Homevision Unit....So I copied my schedule across to it ....set all the relevent configurations as required and downloaded to my test Homevision...Next I connected the cables to the Gateway ....L.H.S pic above Homevision serial connects to the lhs socket (black one) and the CBUS network connects to the rhs socket(white one).
The pc network cable plugs into the socket shown in the R.H.S pic and the 9v dc power lead plugs into the power socket on the same side as the ethernet socket.........Obviously I had problems which isnt unusual for me ....I couldnt get the Gateway to initialise.....After a lot of messing around I realised that Homevision couldnt communicate with the hv serial board the Gateway was connected to ....In the end the problem was I had the Homevision telephone interface enabled and I didnt have one connected. Once I fixed that issue up the Gateway went through its initialisation stages and all was ok....
I did some testing using my test Homevision / FirM and watched as the Gateway updated my lighting and also the CBUS web page that it generates showing the status of all loads....Also tested using the Custom lighting Menu in Homevision ..All loads updated almost instantly ....so all looks good and the Upgrading process is much easier than I thought....
Im going to leave the Gateway connected to my test system for a couple of weeks and then switch it over to my installed setup....One feature that im looking forward to using is the ability to trigger actions from cbus messages...For Example one of my bedroom cbus switches turns off all lights ,once this happens an action will occur that sets a goodnight flag in Homevision which disables my Bedroom pir from triggering the lights...
Since Kevin is a xAP Developer / User the Gateway is xAP enabled
This is just brief glimpse of Kevins CBUS Gateway and if interested in it I would suggest joining the ForuM Kevin has setup for his Product....