Comments on Toolkit V1.1.3

Hi.

I've played with a few of the beta releases, so now that the line has been drawn in the sand, it's probably fair to comment on some of the features of the toolkit.

I'm a hardware nut and like to get in to units and ferkle with things. Sometimes I get sand in the gears, but that's part of the fun. I was comfortable with V 1.12, and got used to V2, but the toolkit seems a bit insulated from the units to me. I hope that a few more features will be included to do what I want (or perhaps the features are there now, but I just haven't played with it long enough to find them).

First, the good bits:

The toolkit works with my PC interface V 2.00d! You've done well!! I know the old interface doesn't support many nice features, but downloading went smoothly and seemed faster than V2.

I love the "windows" sorting of any columns you want. GREAT for finding units or working out group associations.

Bad bits:

Noticed that Area addresses are no longer in the summary tables, nor to they appear in the group lists. Could be a good thing in the long run as area programming comes with so many rules, but in my case, where I use area addressing, it is painful to extract which units use which area address.

When approaching an established installation with more than one network, the 'make network' through a bridge works okay, but presents an empty screen. Since it is pretty obvious that you are attempting to explore beyond the near side of the network, it would be nice if the toolkit at least invited the user to ping the other side to see what's out there. I found that I had to go back to the project manager and click on the new network to get any further.

I noticed no support for RCS units at all (and I was looking forward to changing some of mine, too).


Wishes:

It would be nice to be able to filter all the units on all group columns within a given application to reveal which units have a particular group address. This would allow viewing of each "switched circuit", if you like, and help troubleshooting.

In the function box for a key on a key unit where appropriate, it would be nice to have a predefined function for "timed dimmer", resulting in the same key functions as a normal dimmer, except with "start" replacing "idle" as the just-pressed function. This works on 1.2.67, Neo, Saturn and DLT and wireless, but won't work on 1.00 version key units.

Where can I toggle a group (actually change the state of a group on the network in the appropriate application) to see if I'm on the right track? This was in V2, but I can't seem to find it here. Is this not planned to be supported?



Minor Bug:

In a Bridge, if the application addresses are set to $FF, they show up as <unused>, when in fact they should be <wildcard> or something like that to show that they will allow 'connection' for all applications.

Confusing bits:

What does "live group levels" mean in the preferences if you can't ferkle with them?

What's the "part name" column for in the database? it seems a duplication of the "Tag"?



I can't wait to get a DLT or two installed and have some fun with the labels!

All in all a positive experience!

Keep up the good work!

Don

 

Hi Don, in hindsight, I'm suprised this hasnt come up before.. it's an oversigh rather than a conscious decision to remove Area from the summary.

A good point.. If we pop up a "Network created, do you want to scan the units nowY/N?" dialog that should do the trick.

There's kind of a basic mechanism in there already that allows this.. select a Group in the Treeview (You need to expand the Groups Node), you'll see the list of units that rely on that Group shown in the Listview on the right. This could definitely be better and I agree, some form of filtering in the Unit View would really rock especially By Application, By Group, By Area, By Type (all input units, all output units etc). I've recorded this for consideration in a future release.

Noted.. nice suggestion.

Select the Groups Node.. then select a Group in the listview.. buttons will appear for setting the Group on and Off.

Good point.

When you select the Groups Node it shows the current state of each group on the Network. As Groups change on the Network the listview changes as well.. In a really busy Network you may want to turn this off as it does cause a bit of flicker and processing overhead for the software. So the preference allows you to turn it off.

The partname is the 8 chars that actually get stored to the Unit, the TagName is the description that gets stored in the database.. So Partname = "UPTOKKEY4" and TagName = "Upstairs Toilet Key 4".

Don, love the detailed feedback! Thanks.

 

Duncanrm,

I obviously have missed the groups node bit. I'll check it out tonight. Unforunately I can't play with toolkit at work due to Win 95 here (I tried loading two different V3 versions on a Win95 machine, but despite going through the install process with a smile, the Java bit just didn't kick in. ..should I try again with toolkit?)

Don't change the area address thing yet. It's probably not a bad move dropping it. I don't think wireless supports areas, and now that we have Neo, Saturn, reflection, DLT, etc. which can all issue scenes, the main use of the area address "All off" or "all on" can be handled this way.Using Areas makes the system harder to monitor, whereas the scenes give you a complete view of what is happening in the network. At least the parameter can still be accessed in the "GUI" for each unit.

There's something fishy with the part name field. I transferred all my units from an existing installation to the database, and the part name field all ended up "NEWUNIT", whereas the Tag ended up with the real part name stored in the unit!

Don

 

Win95 isnt supported Don.. I'll ensure the Installer is updated to check for this in future.. Win95, quaint

I'll dig into this a bit, thanks.

 

Hi Don,

Officially we only support Windows 98/ME/2K/XP/2003. There is nothing specific in Toolkit or C-Gate (I believe) that prohibits running on Win95. However, as you have discovered Java support is a bit flaky.

We haven't tested (and have no plans to test) Toolkit on Windows 95 so can't offer any specific advise on trying to get it working.

 

How about changing the default install path to c:\program files, and not under the root of C. Very annoying IMO

 

Hi Znelbok,

We have that request logged. I like the idea myself, however it will take a little longer to move to this becuase of testing requirements.

 

I suppose this is a reminder of when the C-Bus software was a Windows 3.11 product, no Program Files folder then.
Personally, I like all my clipsal software in the C:/CLIPSAL/ folder but I suppose this should change in future versions...
Regards,
Michael.

 

There are quite a few issues to consider. For instance

c:\Clipsal\C-BusV2\Projects\

was bareable for user stored data. However,

C:\Program Files\Clipsal\C-Gate2\Tags\

is not that desirable.

If we move to a new directory structure I believe we should start to support the My Documents structure as well

My Documents\C-Bus Projects\

This ties in with most other Windows programs.

Most lilkely we won't do this until the porting of current projects to the Toolkit platform is complete. That way it can be done in a consistance manner for all products.

Also as Windows heads closer and closer to actually being secure, we need to consider the security implications that are growing with locking down of directories and permissions.

 

Area address

Please bring back Area address (I didn't notice it had gone!) It's all very well for Uncle Don to say it is not necessary with all the new products coming out etc etc but what about an installer going to an existing site that uses Area Addresses and they need to know what key controls what Output unit by which Area Address? Just before you go to sleep tonight repeat 'backward compatibility' three times and have sweet dreams.

 

I would imagine the area address issue is unintentional, as much backwards compatiability as is possible is the plan for C-Bus Toolkit.

 

I would appreciate the unit details be expanded to show the channel number of the chosen group address.

 

We have plans to greatly expand the capability fo Toolkit to show the relationships between areas/groups addresses/units etc... to make understanding the configuration of a network (and inter-network relationships) better. Detailing relationships to the key/channel level will most likely fall into these plans.

However, this is a more medium term vision for Toolkit rather than a release just around the corner.