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[julian]

My recording Macros are still not working.
After 2 minutes, which is the delay I set,
the macro causes AHP to crash. Also, if I
change the macro to take snapshots every 5
seconds and have a delay of only 10 seconds,
it loops continuously. I thought these
problems were supposed to be fixed? Is anyone
else seeing these issues?

[Tuicemen]

julian : which OS are you running on? I
couldn't get them to run in 98 with the
beta. Can't test that now with 98 but they
work on my XP pc.

[JimC]

Julian,

I have a macro set up to record stills at 5
second intervals for 2 minutes when
triggered by a motion sensor. Just tried it
and it seems to be working fine. I am
running Windows XP Home SP2.

[julian]

I am running XP Home, with the latest version
of AHP 1.385.
Jim - have you tried to use the Video Record
function in your macros? I tried the macros
just the way you have it and it still loops
as if it ignores the flag and restarts as
soon as motion is detected again (within the
2 minute period, when the flag should prevent
it from restarting).

[JimC]

Julian,

No I have not tried the video record
function only the video stills. I am sorry
about the previous post where I stated that
the macro was triggered by a motion sensor.
It is actually triggered by a IR beam that
is reflected back to the sender by a
reflector. (can’t remember what these units
are called) It is a very narrow beam unlike
a motion sensor and my walking past it
would have only caused it to trigger the
macro once. Sorry, this information is not
very useful in your situation.

I have used flags in other situations with
motion sensors that turn on lights and dim
them and the flags seem to be working
there. I have not tried them with the
cameras yet.

[Tuicemen]

julian: I just tried a variation of this and
flags are definetly not being set by AHP . I
as well as others reported this in the beta.

[julian]

Well, I reinstalled everything from scratch
on two computers - one running XP Home, the
other one Win2000 Professional. I rebuilt my
AHX file with all 22 modules, 3 cameras, 6
motion sensors, a few timers and macros, and
I still get the same results. I have a couple
of macros where I use flags because I dim the
lights and even those are flaky - they run OK
for a while and all of a sudden one of the
macros will start ignoring the flags and
start all over... I am running out of ideas.
Hopefully X10 will shed some light on the
smart macros issue - it seems to be the only
major problem left in AHP.

[JimC]

Julian,

This is what I have found trying to set
flags for use with the video macro. It
appears that flags can only be set from
macros stored in the interface. As all of
the video record functions can only be run
from the PC this causes the problem with
setting flags. What I have done that seems
to work is to create two macros. One of the
macros contains all of the video record
functions and the other is used for setting
the flags. It looks something like this….
The first macro (the one triggered by the
motion sensor) contains one else function
and looks like this
First macro = Trigger condition A14 on and
flag status 3 on > Turn floor lamp on ( I
just used the floor lamp as a place holder
so this portion of the macro would have
something to do) > ELSE > set flag 3 > turn
place holder cam on (I8) > wait one minute
> clear flag 3

The macro for the camera place holder (I8)
looks like this.
Turn camera on (B2) > start video record >
wait 1 minute >stop video record.

If you need this explained more clearly let
me know.

[JimC]

Julian,

I should have mentioned that I used a HR12A
remote to simulate the motion sensor.
Pressing the A14 button started the record
function and repeatedly pressing the A14 on
button did not cause it to crash. When I
was testing it I did not include a flag
clear command so that I could check to see
if the flag was setting. And every time I
tried it the flag did set.

Hope this is helpful.  It would be so much
easier if X10 would fix the problem and no
work arounds were needed.

Good luck

[julian]

I went back to using the VCR Commander 2 and
the good ol' VHS tape! The video quality is
better and I can download to PC using the
MiniDV pass-through function. AND I get the
sound too! I hope they fix the flags issue
though...
I also noticed that my CM15A loses RF range
(significantly) when the USB cable is plugged
in.

[X10 Pro]

Julian: We can fix the problem with the
flags. It's on our list to do now. If your
CM15A loses range when connected to the PC,
it's almost certain that RF noise is
traveling up the USB cable and interfering
with the RF functions of the CM15A. There's
not a lot you can do about that,
unfortunately, other than unplugging the USB
cable. Other users have tried putting chokes
or blocks on the cable, but I don't know how
successful that's been.