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CM15A Disclaimer
Home Domination now supports the CM15A, however it's not exactly ideal yet,
although it works much better than it did a while ago. But
please download
the demo and try it out before you buy to make sure it does what
you need it to on your machine. And read on if you want to
know all the details behind this little fiasco.
In general, the CM15A works, however
you may need the X10 Device Network Service to be stopped, or
perhaps started, before the CM15A to work. And there have
been a couple instances where in order for the CM19A to work, the FireCracker
software may need to be running at the same time for some unknown
reason. Home Domination will
detect whether the service needs to be started or stopped and automatically start and/or stop the
X10 Device Network Service. (This feature doesn't work on
Vista however...click here for info on how to manually stop the
service.) It will record a log message if the CM19A
requires FireCracker to be running. If the X10 Device
Network Service needs to be active, you will unlikely be able to
get information from the CM15A, but you should be able to control
switches with it.
Nitty-Gritty Dirt
ActiveHome Pro has an SDK for the CM15A, however
it's not a real SDK. A real SDK is self contained, and their
SDK is really an interface into their software. If you've
ever checked out their forum, you know that their reputation for
solid software is less than stellar. I didn't want to be
tied to their software, so I decided to go the back door route and
directly communicate with the CM15A.
Initially, it appeared like supporting this device
was going to be a "piece of cake". It
worked great for me as long as the X10 Device Network Service was
stopped. But that cake grew stale as I ran into problems
with using LibUSB-Win32
on other people's machines. LibUSB-Win32 is what I use for
the communicating with USB devices. Not to worry, Stephen
Meyer was very helpful with these issues and the LibUSB-Win32
install issues were resolved.
The next problem was not so easy to solve.
Even though I needed to have the X10 Device Network Service
stopped on my machine in order to use the CM15A, on some machines,
it wouldn't work at all unless it was running. My
development machine runs great with the service stopped, and my
laptop will only work if the service is started.
Unfortunately, when the service is running, the service intercepts
anything that the CM15A sends, so Home Domination isn't able to
receive anything that is sent through the power lines or RF
signals. As my "piece of cake" began to get
hard and moldy, I worked to figure out why this different behavior
was happening. Both machines use the same operating system
(Windows XP Pro) and any other differences I've so far ruled out
as being part of the problem.
Another weird thing that seems to be related is
that on one of my alpha tester's machines, FireCracker has to be
running in order for the CM19A to work at all. The CM19A
works just fine on my laptop.
I do now have it so it will at least detect which
situation is happening and automatically either start or stop the
X10 Device Network Service (and restore it after the program is
shut down), and put a message in the log. If the CM19A needs
to have FireCracker running, it will put a message to this affect
in the log too. But if your machine is one that needs to
have the X10 Device Network Service enabled, you will be able to
control switches, but you'll be limited in what you can do since
it won't be able to receive anything.
The CM11A still works great.
If I figure this out, I'll definitely fix it,
however for right now, it's time to get on with life again.
There's a lot of cool stuff I could be doing and I plan to get
back onto that now.
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