Finally 'Comfort' plugin for Mainlobby

[dcrera]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]Hi,[/font]
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[font=\"Times New Roman\"]Good news for users of Mainlobby and Comfort.[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]In brief, Mainlobby is a touchscreen interface for DIY Home Automation enthusiast.[/font]
[font=\"Times New Roman\"]http://www.cinemaronline.com/mainlobby.html[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]A team of developers put together a plugin that has full two way control over any serial device. Their previous offering was a plugin called MlGenericSerial that offered similar but limited flexibility.[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]Their newest offering is called MlGenericDevice. MLGD supports sending of RS232 commands via a comport or a GlobalCache IP to serial device. The plugin also supports full scripting support for parsing of return data and many other useful and powerful functions. [/font]
[font=\"Times New Roman\"]http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.ml...evice.html[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]When I migrated from a serial UCM to UCM/Ethernet, I had problems talking to Comfort's UCM/Ethernet directly. A work around was to use a serial port redirector software to route all comport activity to an IP address 192.168....[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]This solution has it's limitations. It is slow, expensive and not 100 % reliable.[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]While MLDG was in beta, I approached the developers at Mainlobby (Cinemar) and asked them to build in support for Comfort's UCM/Ethernet with the Tibbo module.[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]I spent the last few weeks beta testing this solution and am glad to report that this works like a dream. It's faster, provides instant two-way feedback, has excellent scripting capabilities and cheaper than a serial redirect software. [/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"]Anyone in the market for a touchscreen interface should check this solution out.[/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"] [/font]

[font=\"Times New Roman\"] [/font]

 

[ident]

Thats great news
Do you mean that you now have a custom plug-in for Comfort? Will it be listed in their device drivers page http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.drivers.html
Otherwise, how can someone get access to the plugin?

[smoothtlk]

Hi Ident,

To introduce myself, I am David Li of Cinemar, Inc.

We are the creators of the MainLobby suite of software / hardware automation and media control products.

We are excited with the introduction of the MLGenericDevice addon to MainLobby Server.  This new component makes it much easier for a non software developer to create a device driver for ASCII RS232 devices.

We would also like to thank dcrera for working with the main developer of MLGenericDevice (Tracy - CE90) and for his idea to incorporate the Tibbo ethernet / Serial adapter.

Over the years, we have gotten many inquiries from both Comfort dealers and end users to develop an interface means to tie the reliability of the Comfort hardware with the power and flexibility of the MainLobby software suite.  We are glad to hear from end users that the Comfort device driver is working well!

The MLGenericDevice plugin is available at http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.ml...evice.html

The MLGenericDevice plugin was designed to facilitate easy export / import of device drivers.

The Comfort driver is a creation of dcrera, who was assisted by CE90 during it\'s development.  So, it\'s up to dcrera if he would like to post the results.

If I can answer any other MainLobby questions, fire away!

Looking forward to working with Comfort dealers and end users!

David (smoothtlk)

[slychiu]

David, thanks for the introduction. We will point to Mainlobby as another user interface into Comfort. We are keen to try it out ourselves, and will contact dcrera for the driver

[palmlodge]

It\'s still unclear as to what is required for MainLobby to talk to Comfort.

 

Could the MainLobby group post a synopsis of the components required ?

[smoothtlk]

At a minimum, here is my understanding of what software components would be required:

MainLobby combo (consists of MainLobby client / designer and MainLobby3 Server software - these are the essential core of the MainLobby suite)

MLGenericDevice plugin - this is the software that allows end users to develop RS232 ASCII device drivers

The Comfort MLGenericDevice driver definition file - this is what dcrera has developed using the MLGenericDevice to make the communications Comfort specific that he would have to share (unless another user wanted to make up their own using MLGenericDevice).

That should be it to be able to view the Comfort status and send the Comfort panel commands from any touchscreen / PC in the home (or via Internet).

MainLobby software suite is componentized so that as you want additional capability, you purchase and install that additional component.  This makes it more cost effective to start, and highly customizable for most any dream.

Hope that helps!  Thanx for asking.

[palmlodge]

I\'ve just found the requirements.

 

Windows. Sorry, but there\'s not a chance in hell I\'ll run windows for a touchscreen app.

 

Make MainLobby run on Linux and I\'ll be interested. FYI, I\'ve only ever installed Linux once about 5 years ago, so there\'s no snobbery here - just it will run off a 2Gb memory stick with no fat overheads for a touchscreen app.

[smoothtlk]

Yes, we used to get that comment a bit at industry tradeshows.  It is now down to a few conversations here and there at each show.

The issue isn\'t Windows...the issue is how one designs and maintains a system.  Windows is dead reliable when used professionally.  It runs most of the mission critical systems in most technology areas.  A home\'s lighting system is really pretty minor (as one example).

Integration with embedded systems like Comfort make this even more bulletproof.  You can leave security aspects (probably the most important thing in a home to be reliable) to the Comfort embedded system, and then leave the functions that are slightly less critical (lighting, entertainment, music, video, etc) to MainLobby running on a solid Windows platform.

But, we have had that conversation with CE pros and technologists many many times, and I haven\'t been convinced that Linux is the answer.

Not to mention that there isn\'t a Linux solution that can compete with MainLobby.  So, the OS may be fine, just not the same level of software app that runs on it, so no end to end capability.  Of course, all of the above is open to conversation as there are many points of view