X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Troubleshooting Automation Problems => Topic started by: cj4331 on February 17, 2009, 07:32:13 PM

Title: FireCracker not working
Post by: cj4331 on February 17, 2009, 07:32:13 PM

I got a 4 piece FireCracker kit CK18A with the unit firecracker unit itself being CM17A I believe.  Well the software will not see the firecracker.  The pass through works fine as the uninterpretable power supply monitoring that is plugged into it works fine.  I tried this on a very old pc of mine and it works on that one.  What do I need to test to get it to work on my main pc?  Like I said the serial port works because the UPS communications takes place on it just fine even through the firecracker.  Ideas?

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: Tuicemen on February 17, 2009, 08:29:10 PM

cj4331 the cm17a will not work with the firecracker software if the x10net.dll is running!
How ever other thirdparty software will work for the cm17a if the x10nets is running!

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: cj4331 on February 17, 2009, 08:53:51 PM

your're onto something.  I did purchase a wireless camera system from X10 awhile back.  It had a usb transceiver and software that was loaded on the pc that will now not work with firecracker.  I uninstalled the camera software cause I returned the camera kit but maybe that dll is still running.  Do you know how I check and remove the problem dll?

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: Tuicemen on February 17, 2009, 09:03:48 PM

Press ctrl alt delete (opens windows task manager) find the X10nets.exe in running processes and end it!
Then go to C:\Program Files\Common files\x10\Common  remove(delete) the x10nets.exe file.

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: Dan Lawrence on February 17, 2009, 09:29:22 PM

Of course, if the OP is also running AHP, deleting X10Nets.exe will deprive it of any module status.

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: cj4331 on February 17, 2009, 09:31:42 PM

X10nets.exe wasn't running.  Apparently that's not it.

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: cj4331 on February 17, 2009, 10:41:25 PM

I got it!  I found something on x10s support site about it not working with a mouse as a passthrough device because a mouse was a full time device.  Well, that got me thinking.  The UPS monitoring is probably a full time device too.  So I uninstalled it and sure enough the firecracker now works.

Kinda wish this wasn't a serial device but a usb device but hey--that's life.

Now I understand there is a lot of programs out there that will let me script or time events using the firecracker.  What's fuse?  Is it free?

Title: Re: FireCracker not working
Post by: Tuicemen on February 18, 2009, 07:39:48 AM

fuse is an addon for the firecracker software that gives you timers and such!
No it isn't free :(
If you enjoy writing scripts get misterhouse (http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/) it suports the CM17A and is free!
After you use the CM17A for a while you'll soon see how limited you are doing home automation with it!