Free time, kind of ...

Finally, I finished a rather nasty semester and an overlapping busy time at work. Most of this was my own doing, I could have handled the issues better. At the beginning of the semester I wasn't proactive (sounds like a marketing term) with the handling of my tuition hence hence its handling was botched (my tuition was paid late). Then my books arrived late and further problems were experienced getting my lab supplies even later. The end result was that I started from 3 to 5 weeks late. Since I'm taking online courses at Pace University time management is very important. With the help of my professors (they were very lenient on due dates) I was able to eventually catch up. I was lucky this semester because one course was on material I know well (networking). The other was very interesting but difficult course (Telecommunications II). By the final week I managed to catch up but I needed to take a couple weeks vacation to do it. I received an A in both courses and put a lot of work into getting those grades. Moral to the story is that I need to manage the tuition and assignment schedule better. Don't leave things to the last minute!

Enough about why I've been too busy to do anything with HA. I haven't been totally without some HA research. On the hardware side I ordered a MSP430 USB Stick Development Tool and ez430 MSP430F2012 Target Board (includes 3 boards). The F2012 chip doesn't have a UART but does support SPI and I2C along with ADC and is low power. It has 2K of flash and 128 bytes of RAM. This should be an interesting chip to play with. I've played with the PIC's and the 8051 family. I'm very comfortable with the 8051 family, it's an easy chip to use (C or assembler). The 12 or 14 bit PIC is a difficult chip when using assembler. I'm more comfortable with it when using C or BASIC. The nice thing about PICs is that the selection is flexible and when they were first introduced the tools and information were easy to get. The first MCU I was introduced to was the 6801, though the first CPU was the 6502. I really liked the Motorola chips (the 6809 is still my favorite chip) but eventually so did the Automotive industry and just couldn't get them in small quantities anymore. I've not used a DSP before so this should be interesting. Of course it has more capabilities than your average MCU so I have a bit of learning to do. Of course I have the GCC MSP430 tools for Linux. There are rpms to install the compiler on Fedora but I'll need to compile the compiler suite for Ubuntu. Oh, in case your wondering I have plenty of other boards (like the ZX40a or the s180 used on the HCS II) that I'm not mentioning because I'm that far behind. :-)

On the software side I've purchased 2 books on Perl (Intermediate Perl and the out of print - Learning Perl Objects, References, and Modules ). I'm hoping that this will help with Mr. House and Insteon. I'm very tired of not having my HA up and running (my X10 is not operational at this point, see Everyone Loves Mystery for details). I need to get a module built for to support the Insteon PLC and the Insteon modules. Right now I have 2 dead RS232 PLCs and 2 USB PLCs. I hope that the Insteon folks will take them back otherwise I'll only be able to use the USB PLC. That will require a new module to support the USB HID interface. I'm not sure I'm up to that much of a challenge at this point (a USB OO module and an Insteon OO modules).

PS: I again have a working X10 setup! It turns out the the power strip with my laser printer on it is the cause. In the past I have removed the power from the printer but this time I removed the entire strip. POW! The X10 is now operational. I'll have to check the power usage of the laser printer and see if I can get a filter that will work with it.

Home Automation and miscellaneous updates

In a previous blog entry (Everyone loves a mystery!), I lamented at the state of my home automation. Most of it didn't work and that which did, didn't follow any logic as to why it did or didn't work. Well I've a little further progress on this subject. Today I was trying out Mark Gilmore's ECS (http://www.omnipotencesoftware.com/) software with my Insteon USB PLC. After some time of fighting with the PLC (it's behavior didn't follow the Insteon documentation, grrr). Anyway I had some of my Insteon working and I had some of the X10 working (more than previous) but it managed to get worse as the day progressed right back to the previous odd behavior. What I have discovered is that the signal is partially getting out. The first half of the command seems strong enough at about 4V. But the second half is getting garbled or not being sent at all. While the X10 looks valid the command D1 D1 DO N DON gets sent as D1 D1 B5. As the day progressed the Insteon went from working to not working also. The Insteon PLC is now flickering, not blinking, like traffic is being sent. This pretty much keeps the PLC from sending anything. The T1103 mostly works but that seems to be it.

My next course of action is the start tearing everything out and add one thing at a time until the network fails. I have a feeling that the problem may be related to the cheap Geek Squad UPS units I have. They're behind filters but I still suspect them.

I've also sent quite a bit of time updating my web pages. Between school, work and family there's not much left over. They're a mess! There is no logical format of the directories and a lot of material is hidden deep in subdirectories. I've begun reorganizing the site in the hopes of a more logical flow and less wasted space (duplicate material). So you may find some of the links broken from time to time. I'll try to repair them as quickly as possible. Please report any broken links to the outside world. I haven't run my link check program in a long time and I'm sure there are more than a few bad links. I hope to get that program up and running in the next week or so.

Update:

I received an email from Robert Stephens (Founder and Chief Inspector, The Geek Squad), he wanted to know if he could help with any problems with the UPS (GS-685U) that I have. I guess I need to be a little more clear about the problem. Here's how I replied to Robert:

Stephens, Robert (GeekSquad) wrote:

> Neil,
>
> I saw your blog post.  The Geek Squad is very concerned about quality.
> Can you tell me more about your concerns of the UPS?  If there is any
> quality issue, I'll be sure to take care of it for you.

Pardon my choice of words. I didn't mean to infer that the GS UPS was the problem. I doubt you are familiar with X10. X10 is a power line carrier protocol. It uses the power line to talk to X10 modules. One of the problems is that any electrical device on the line can lower the impedance (resistance) and eat X10 signals. This is what is happening in my setup. I have filters on the power line to the UPS. The filter is supposed to raise the impedance to the point where X10 signals just pass by the UPS. At one point last week (when I wrote the blog entry) I had removed the UPS and filter from my power lines, tested the X10 and found it working. But a couple of hours later that turned out to be less likely. The problems returned and I again removed the UPS from the power line only to find that X10 problems remained. X10 tends to be fickle and right now is causing me no end of problems.

BTW, Robert has home automation and is familiar with X10. He also said that he is looking/pushing Best Buy into offereing home automation. Cool! A local place to purchase HA equipment! In the mean time, my GS-685U has saved my bacon 3 times so far in the last few months, thank you! I'm looking into getting a few more small units for my Tivo and a few other devices. I also have to lodge a complaint with my power utility to see if there is a problem with the area's power or whether the problem is local to my home. This has nothing to do with my X10 problems just the quality of my power. A few year ago the utility did have to come out and tighten the drop. Maybe there is a further problem with the drop and it needs to be replaced.

As you can see my X10 problems still persist (grrr)! Maybe this weekend I'll get to tearing apart the X10 network and see if I can resolve this issue once and for all!