Third Party Macro Triggers

[Puck]

After just playing with Bill's awesome program BXVC, and reading through the BXVC (Bill's X10 Voice Commander) thread (well I'm on page 8 now...), one thought comes to mind:

The Possibilities Are ENDLESS!!!!

But I'm wrong... the possibilities END at 256. 

My wish... AHP to open up the rest of the alphabet to address dummy modules / macros.

[and of course for Bill to access those]   

[Tuicemen]

Wait untill you add X10dispatcher in with BXVC!
The posibilities grow even more as you can use X10dispatcher  to talk to BXVC!
Yes I've done this!
Humm I suppose x10wavplayer will talk to BXVC as well since it can't (yet ) see security devices.
Haven't tested that yet!
Add AlertDialer into the mix(if you have a voice modem)
and there aren't enough letters in the alphabet!
If x10 could get AHP to use the rest of the alphabet it would put it ahead of the pack!

[roger1818]

My wish... AHP to open up the rest of the alphabet to address dummy modules / macros.

Not really possible since 8 bits are used to identify a macro address (4 bits for the house code and 4 bits for the unit code). 

One thing that would be possible is to develop templates in AHP so that the same set of commands could be put in several macros.  The code in the template would be copied into each macro that uses it.  That way the user would only have to modify the template once and all macros that use it would be automatically changed.  Since you aren't actually calling a macro, an address doesn't need to be assigned to the template.

These templates probably would not be visible to third party software however.

[Puck]

Yeah.. PLC / hardware wise, there's probably no way for expandability. But software wise, like your suggestion, there's gotta be a way to allow other programs to communicate and trigger non-conventional macro names.

[-Bill- (of wgjohns.com)]

To be fair, since MACROs can be triggered by either ON or OFF commands, there are actually 512 possible MACRO triggers!   

Assuming you don't have any modules to address!         

[MeThinks]

Why can't we get macros to operate without triggers, wouldn't it be nice if AHP would just look at its own status and then cause an event?

e.g. if a security system is armed (no matter what arms it, whether it be any remote or macro) all the lights or ones you specify turn off.

Should be simple, but no, I have to make a macro for every possible way a security system is armed(plus a macro for every type of arm, home or away), just to make the lights go out, so I don't have to go around and turn them off or find a remote or use my computer....

Why can't AHP be its own trigger?....that wouldn't be too hard to intergrate, would it?

Who knows?