Toolkit, Homegate and CGate

Folks,

I currently have the Toolkit/CGate combination on a single (XP Pro) PC. CGate talks to CBus over my LAN using an MSS100/5500PC combination. It all works well.

Homegate is not installed at the moment, but I remember from before that it will also want to talk to CGate.

I have just installed a shiny new Windows 2003 Server and would ideally like to run CGate and Homegate (the runtime bit anyway) on there, with Toolkit connecting as necessary from the XP box. This will allow "maintenance" from Toolkit and "operation" from the Homegate web pages.

Splitting CGate and Toolkit seems to be no problem. However, running CGate on an unattended (and unlogged in) server seems to be a challenge. There is a post on here from last August that talks about running CGate as a Windows Service. Is there any news on that?

Presumably Toolkit and Homegate can happily work through the same instance of CGate?

Anything else I need to be worrying about?

Thanks,

Nick

 

We haven't done any testing with Windows 2003 Server, however, we aren't expecting any problems. I will however arrange some copiess for the testers and add it to their test regime. (They will love me for it).

This is certainly one of the way we envisioned people using the products. One one caveat to be aware of, details below.

It is in the works, hopefully not *too* far away now. But I can't give a definate as it will need some fairly robust testing and that can take a while.

Everything works sort of fine together if you follow some rules.

A) When Toolkit is connected to C-Gate "all bets are off" as to other control systems using C-Gate. We can't guarentee that the Home Gate etc.. will operate 100% as the internal modelling of the networks in C-Gate is affected by Toolkit means that scenes may not trigger correctly or Group address values may not indicate perfectly. This should only be while Toolkit is connected. Hopefully eventually this behaviour will be removed in the future.

B) Modifying Tags (Add,edit & delete) will not show up in the other application until it is restarted. So if you have HomeGate running and you start Toolkit and add a new Group, HomeGate won't see that new group until HomeGate is restarted. The same issue applies in reverse, i.e. adding the group to HomeGate and neeeding to restart Toolkit to see it. Again this is an issue that will eventually be resolved so you don't need to restart the apps. (NOTE: You DO NOT have to restart C-Gate to all scanned units etc... are still there so the restarting of Toolkit or HomeGate is relatively quick).

 

Thanks - a comprehensive answer and plenty of food for thought!

Nick