How to hard reset HomeMinder?

Hi all,

I have a HomeMinder system connected to C-Bus. I want to connect to HomeMinder from a PC via RS232.

The HomeMinder Software cannot see the HomeMinder Controller. The trace window is empty.

But when I run serial port testing tool (or telnet) I can see that HomeMinder sends me Hayes modem commands e.g.
+++
ATH
ATZ
and so on.

I figured out that HomeMinder is configured to talk to a modem. But I don't have a modem (and if I did, it would probably be calling some previous owner's phone number...).

So I need to reconfigure HomeMinder to talk to a PC directly without modem.
But this seems to be a catch-22 situation in HomeMinder - you cannot reconfigure HomeMinder without connecting to it first. But I cannot connect to it because it is configured to talk to a modem, not to a PC.

Is there a way to hard reset HomeMinder to factory defaults so it forgets that it needs to talk to a modem?

I tried switching off power, battery and removing the 3V battery for 10 minutes or so, disconnecting C-Bus, but HomeMinder still seems to remember and starts talking to a modem as soon as I turn it on.




BTW I don't want to purchase C-Bus interface for PC at this stage - seems too expensive. I can program HomeMinder okay to switch some lights on and off as long as I can access it.

 

Oh no he said the 'M' word..

 

I seem to remember there is an escape sequence that you send to it to change modes.

I really can't remember but it is something like ~~~

You need to shout out to Conformist on this forum who will hopefully remember.

Cheers

Rohan

 

you almost had it but there is 1 more step. the memory still hold a while on internal capacitor

remove the battery and short the battery terminals on the holder together for 10 seconds..

this in my experience speeds up erase !

Charles

 

The HomeMinder will try to talk to both the RS232 and the modem.

Assuming you have the project, try to do a 'force controller reload' from the menu option and see if that kicks it into action.

If this is no good, try some different baud rates. I've seen this work too.

If still no good, then you will need to erase the project completely as has been suggested. You will need to remove the (16V ac) power, disconnect the 12V battery backup and remove the program backup battery (the coin battery on the main board). As suggested in another post, once the coin battery has been removed, short the centre tab to the outer ring of the battery holder to discharge the capacitor (only a very small charge so you won't see a spark or anything. Put the coin battery back in, reconnect the 12V battery and then re-apply the 16V power.

BTW, if you are trying to connect to C-Bus network through the HomeMinder, then you probably won't have any luck. I seem to remember getting it to work with a very, very, very old version of C-Bus software (pre-toolkit), but I don't think it works once C-Gate came into existence.

 

Thanks to everyone. I managed to connect to HomeMinder.
I think that short circuiting the 3.2V battery holder helped.

BTW I can also access C-Bus configuration alright through the HomeMinder software (installed C-Bus 2.5.something).

Now want to change some things in the scenarios. Not much help available about the programming language - have to read an example project carefully.

One thing I cannot yet figure out is the clock in HomeMinder. It seems to have been updated automatically from the computer - it has the correct date and correct time to the minute, but wrong hours. Probably timezone is incorrect. But I am not sure what is the format for the timezeron, it is TimeZone=32400,1 in the .ini file.

 

What hardware version minder is it V1 or V2?

What software version are you running?

How far out are the hours?

The controllers time gets set from the PC that is running the Minder application. As far as I remember it gets the time zone as well. Check the time zone on the PC you are using.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Even though there is a time zone setting in the ini file I don't think it really uses this and can find no mention in any of the manuals.

From what I recall what you set up is when daylight savings starts and ends but this is only for automatically changing time. You also put in the lat/long of the location where it is installed, but this is for calculating sunset and sunrise times.

If you think about it the only way to change time is through the PC, in which case it should get the current PC time, regardless of timezone or manually through the keypad. Its not like it can sync to an NTP server.