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Text File | 1994-09-03 | 11.3 KB | 263 lines | [TEXT/R*ch]

cronX10 Version: 1.0b6 Date: September 3, 1994 Written by: Jerry Gatlin at Hill Country Softworks This program is copyrighted by the author and is not in the public domain. I am offering this as freeware though, so you are able to freely distribute this as long as this documentation accompanies the application. You may freely use this in any non-commercial manner. If you wish to use it in any other way, please contact the author at: jerry@hipark.austin.isd.tenet.edu 4702 Valley Oak Dr. Austin, Texas 78731 512 458-1739 Let me know how you like it and if it works as described. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— NAME cronX10 - a X10 controller (CP290) program to be used with Chris Johnson's cron utility. DESCRIPTION This program controls X10 modules to turn on and off appliances, lights, thermostats, and anything else that can be controlled by X10 devices. This program requires a model CP290 X10 computer interface along with the appropriate modules for the devices you wish to control. X10 is available through a variety of sources and both Radio Shack and Leviton make X10 components. Instead of having to run wires to these modules to control them, the X10 protocol runs over your existing AC wiring. You just plug in (or wire in) the module and go. cronX10 solves a problem I've had for quite some time. The application that came with my X10 light controller (CP290) was written in the early days of the Macintosh when only MFS was around. I finally got tired having to put everything at the root level to run, and since I purchased a PowerMac I decided to write the code myself. I'd been wanting to write a cron application for a while and this seemed like a natural one. Since cron has a wonderful interface to write an application to, and it already solved the scheduling problem for me, I wrote this as a faceless bacground application to be launched by cron. This means that YOU MUST HAVE CRON TO RUN THIS PROGRAM!!! Cron is a Macintosh version of the unix scheduling utility written by Chris Johnson. If you're unfamilar with the concept of cron, please download cron and read its documentation before spending much time with this documentation. You should be able to find cron at most of the Mac archive sites. If you have trouble, try these sites: anonymous ftp to ftp.cc.utexas.edu in the /pub/chrisj directory the web page http://gargravarr.cc.utexas.edu/cron/cron.html anonymous ftp to ftp.utexas.edu in the /pub/mac/util or the web page http://www.utexas.edu/cc/microlib-mac/main.html This has been tested with cron 1.0d16 which is the current version as of August 29, 1994. As cron requires system 7 to run, this application by default also requires system 7. Although the Comm ToolBox is built into system 7, if for *any* reason Apple chooses to remove it at a later time, this app won't work. It will be nice and report the reason for its failure to you though. Although primarily intended for scheduling lights, etc. at predetermined times, you can use Chris Johnson's "Command Line" cron debugging aid for immediate, direct control of devices. "Command Line" simply puts up a dialog and allows you to send commands to cron applications immediately instead of setting up cron to execute at the next minute and waiting for the minute to roll by. Many thanks to Chris Johnson for writing cron and providing an incredible interface to use when writing cron commands. And Chris, thanks for the pointers on pointers and handles along with your stringUtil functions, several of which I use in this code. This program is a fat binary (it runs native on either the PowerMac or 68k Macs) and was written using the Metrowerks CodeWarrior C Compiler. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Change history: version 1.0b2 July 15, 1994 fixed a bug that hung in an infinite loop if CronX10 was launched by double-clicking thru the finder. Also added an error message to the log file to reflect this. version 1.0b3 July 19, 1994 Rewrote X10 routines to acknowledge ACK and event uploads. As a result, we can get rid of the semi-heuristic timer that we were using before to determine when we could send another event. I also cleaned up the serial routines to include WaitNextEvent and a timeout so that send and receive won't hang the system under any condition. This includes a new routine that waits (with timeout) for all characters to be sent through the serial port before exiting. version 1.0b4 August 29, 1994 Added undocumented x10 direct commands to provide for: fade to off relative bright as identified by John Marvin and brought to my attention by Dick Herring (thanks guys!). In the process I had changed my serial routines to be more generic and moved all globals from serialRoutines into main. version 1.0b5 August 30, 1994 Changed ppc optimization so native would run in 34k. This had been complied incorrectly so that memory had to be increased to 40k for native version to run. Added blank lines between error messages in error file. Made function parameters case insensitive. Fixed a bad bug that would crash the machine if trying to access a serial port that was already open. If port is open it will now quit elegantly and write an error message in the log. version 1.0b6 September 3, 1994 Added -s argument to set the CP290's time to the Macintosh clock Fixed bug that would cause cronX10 to hang if there was a continuous stream of characters coming in the serial port. It now times out after 15 seconds and reports the problem. Added date and time to error log. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Usage: cronX10 [-s][-l level] [-f function] [-h housecode] [-u unit] [-p serialPort] Purpose: To control X10 lamp and applicance modules thru the CP290 X10 controller using cron to provide the scheduling service. Options: -s This option will syncronize the CP290's clock with the current Macintosh time. If this option is on the command line, all other options except -p are ignored. This allows you to periodically set the CP290 clock to keep it accurate. This is particularly useful if you've downloaded timer events to the CP290 via another program and you wish to keep its clock accurate. -l Follow this with a number between 0 and 15 to control the level of a lamp (dimming) module. 15 is the brightest. If this option is not included, level will default to 15 (full bright). -f Follow this with one of these functions: on (default) turns lamp module to full bright or appliance module to on. off turns lamp or appliance module off. These commands only work on lamp (dimmable) modules: dim turns lamp module to full bright and then dims to level set with -l option. fadeToOff fade any lamp module from its current setting to off. This is a nice effect. relativeBright relativeBright does the opposite of fadeToOff- sort of... If your lamp module has been faded using dim to 0 (this WON'T quite turn your lamp all the way off) or if you've dimmed your lamp using a mini-controller or Leviton switch (which for some reason WILL let you dim to off!), then you can use this command with an appropriate level to increase the brightness. If you use a level of 1, it'll increase the brightness by 1/15; a level of 3 will increase by a level of 3/15, etc. If you've turned your lamp module off using off or fadeToOff, this command will turn your module on to full bright.* ************************************************************* * points to remember about these functions - It's not my code making the CP290 act this way with dim and relativeBright so don't complain to me. I don't like it any more than you do! - Although the function names aren't case sensitive, it'll just default to on if it doesn't understand your function due to misspelling.. ************************************************************* -h Is used to set the base housecode of the X10 unit you wish to control. Base housecodes allowable are A through P. Upper or lower case are acceptable. Default is housecode A. -u Is used to set the unit number of the X10 unit you wish to control. Unit numbers are 1 through 16. Numbers over 16 are set to 16. The default on this option is unique. If you leave this option out, you will control all of the units on a particular housecode. In other words, you can turn on all units (lights, etc.) in housecode A by leaving all options out. -p Defines the serial port you wish to send the commands out of. This application is Comm ToolBox aware and you can use any of the registered Com ToolBox names. Most often, unless you've changed it, you'll be able to use "Modem Port" or "Printer Port". The default is for "Modem Port". If your option is not in the list of registered serial devices, an entry is made to the X10 Error File listing all available device names. Include one of the names from this list (don't forget the quotes if it's more than one word) and it should work just fine. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— X10 Error File: In addition to writing to the error file when you've defined a wrong serial port name, this application will inform you of a variety of errors using this file. It will create this file automatically in the cron directory (that's where this app must be put to work correctly with cron) and will append errors to it as they occur. If you're having trouble getting the X10 to respond, look in this file. It'll tell you things like the serial port you've selected is in use by another application and other errors. It's a text file that's double-clickable by BBEdit. This file will only be created when an error occurs. Once created, it will continue to append to the error log. You may throw this file away at any time. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Examples of crontab entries: 20 8 * * * nobody "cronX10" -l 8 -f dim -u 2 -p "Printer Port" This will turn on unit 2 in housecode A to a dim setting of 8 using the printer port for communications at 8:20am on every day of every week of every year. 0 0 * * * nobody "cronX10" -f off -h b // all units off in b This will turn off every unit in housecode B using the modem port for communications at midnight on every day of every week of every year.