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Author Topic: HomeGenie Weirdness  (Read 4812 times)

LAF

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HomeGenie Weirdness
« on: September 08, 2017, 12:25:17 AM »

Saw a mention of HomeGenie in a thread here so thought I would try it.  Got it communicating with the CM15A and played around a bit.  Then tried to close HomeGenie and launch AHP.  Got an error message saying the CM15A was not connected to the USB port.  Tried rebooting, going into msconfig/services and unchecking the HomeGenie service, unplugging/replugging the USB port, de-installing HomeGenie, using Regedit to remove all the entries HomeGenie left behind, rebooting and unplugging the CM15 and battery after all those steps and, nothing worked (still got the not connected error message).  Unplugging/replugging the usb port cable gave the usual connect/disconnect sounds.   B:(

Finally, tried plugging the usb cable into another port.  This prompted a reload of the AHP device driver and now AHP connects successfully!  What the heck is HomeGenie doing here??  I was afraid it had pooched my CM15 or something.

Anyone else had a similar problem?
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Tuicemen

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Re: HomeGenie Weirdness
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2017, 07:27:05 AM »

HomeGenie talks to the cm15 using a different driver when you installed it  that driver was associated with the USB port the cm15 was plugged into. Moving the cm15 to another port caused Windows to look for drivers again.
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LAF

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Re: HomeGenie Weirdness
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2017, 04:24:55 PM »

OK, thanks.  Didn't occur to me that HG would communicate with its own driver.
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bkenobi

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Re: HomeGenie Weirdness
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2017, 12:13:07 PM »

That's correct.  I had a similar issue when I was deciding whether to switch to HG or not.  Uninstalling the driver completely should allow driver detection process to occur again.

LAF

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Re: HomeGenie Weirdness
« Reply #4 on: September 11, 2017, 01:40:16 PM »

That's correct.  I had a similar issue when I was deciding whether to switch to HG or not.  Uninstalling the driver completely should allow driver detection process to occur again.

Did you end up going with HG?  I've taken a quick look but it appears one has to know one of the languages like Java etc to do much.  I know there are wizards available that will do some of it but I can't find anything in the tutorials related to conditionals.  Is it a given that they have to be done in scripts? And same for macros (or the equivalent)?

I also am not enthused about leaving my desktop on all the time so I am wondering if a Windows tablet might also suffice?

Thanks...
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bkenobi

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Re: HomeGenie Weirdness
« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2017, 11:15:13 AM »

I am using HG.  I bought a first gen RPi and have it set up with Raspian Jesse and HG as a service.  In order to do advanced things, you will need to do some kind of scripting, but many of the basic things are straight forward.  There was a very healthy user community but the author recently decided that unemployment and no financial support for his side project wasn't working out so he's basically suspended development.  The source is open so anyone can make updates and publish them but the code is pretty complex and not exactly suited for entry level programmers to pick up and run with.

That said, you don't really need to know anything about the guts of HG to use it.  It's fully functional and has a lot of capabilities.  I've written a few scripts in C# that are available.  There are a lot of others that have posted their work so you should be able to access/install them directly from the interface.  If you want to do something that's not in the built in feature set or a user provided script, you have the opportunity to write it yourself.  I think looking at scripting as a negative feature is backwards, personally.  I specifically searched out a HA system that was open source (or at least very low cost), compatible with X10 and the CM15A, could run on some type of low power computer (RPi, Android stick, etc), and had a true scripting language.  AHP does not have real scripting and the ways to make it work are a kludged work around IMO.  I'm impressed by those that have made it work, but that's not my approach.
 

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