Residential iPad User Interface System - Page 3

All information and GUI's in this case study are by Barry Gordon himself. These are put together to suit his unique requirements and are designed to reflect his personal tastes. All visual and back end system design are Barry's own and should be looked as an example, CommandFusion recommends you design a system that suits your own requirements and tastes.

This case study is divided up into 3 pages:

1. System Overview - a detailed overview of the house, and what makes up the system.
2. Interface Display Pages - a detailed look at the iViewer 4 GUI
3. JavaScript Modules - info on the JavaScript modules that Barry uses to provide additional functionality to his system

I am a programmer (coder) at heart. I have always liked to build things. I do cabinetry work, building furniture when the need arises. My late wife liked this aspect of my personality. She would take pictures of my workshop into Home Depot at gift giving times and merely ask “What is he missing?”. I built my own stables and corrals when I was into horses, dog houses and pens when I was into showing dogs. Jill, my late wife, told me not to take up golf as building golf courses was too expensive and time consuming. Programming is an avocation that allows one to build very complex things at relatively low cost and get significant gratification when accomplished.

By “programming” I do not mean the placement of graphics on a page, but rather the writing of code in a recognized programming language. One of the major reasons I chose CommandFusion for my HA efforts, and the Pronto PRO before that, was that they both were based on and reasonably made use of a major programming language to enhance capability and functionality. In fact I had a lot of code re-use between the Pronto PRO and iViewer because I dealt with them in the same manner doing all the work in Javascript.

My “style” in using CF is to have all actions, whenever possible performed by referencing a Javascript code function to perform the work. An excellent example of this is the handling of TCP communications for intractable external systems. It seems that many software designers who work for major component manufacturers (e.g. Denon) have a philosophy of “My way, or the Highway”. Because of the Javascript capability in Command Fusion I was able to handle some pretty unreasonable (IMHO) external systems.

To the credit of the CF team, when I told them what I was going through they added basic functionality that relieved/resolved the issues. I process all feedback in Javascript, using the simplest regex possible for that external system. I do all message detection and isolation in Javascript. In this way I have no one to blame but myself when things don't work. There is a large amount of commonality in the process of detecting a message and isolating it form an input stream. Once a message is isolated, the processing of its content becomes device specific, but can be handled quite easily using the Javascript concept of a sieve, the switch statement.

I try to write all my systems to be table driven to the greatest degree possible. Changing the contents of tables is much less error prone than changing code!

Dynamic Configuration Capability:
The entire system is dynamically configured by the contents of the module “Configuration.js”. This module has several classes of items.

The Interface object looks as follows:

{"systems":[	{"name":"pageToStart", "device":"iPad", "page":"HC_HomeControl" },
 
		{"name":"IRsystems", "installed":true, "converters":[{"model":"Global Cache",
			"device":"GC1"}, {"model":"Global Cache", "device":"GC2"} ] },
 
		{"name":"iPadPAL", "installed":true, "stack":"ProntoPal",
			    "IP":"192.168.1.204", "protocol":"TCP", "port":"8000" },
 
     		{"name":"Theater", "installed":true, "stack":"Theater",
			"IP":"192.168.1.205", "protocol":"TCP", "port":"7011" },
 
		{"name":"XAP", "installed":true, "stack":"XAPUDP",
			"IP":"192.168.1.255", "protocol":"UDP", "port":"3639" },
 
		{"name":"GUI_Reload",       "installed":true, "stack":"GUI_Reload",
			"IP":"192.168.1.255", "protocol":"UDP", "port":"8001",
			"url":"192.168.1.207/HomePage/CommandFusion/iPads/House.gui" },
 
		{"name":"Homeseer_PAL",     "installed":true, "stack":"Homeseer_PAL",
			"IP":"192.168.1.204", "protocol":"TCP", "port":"8009" },
 
		{"name":"ISY99i",           "installed":true, "stack":"ISY_Subscribe",
			"IP":"192.168.1.229", "protocol":"TCP", "port":"80",
			"URL":"/desc", "Lighting_Object":"HS", "ISY_Userid":"admin",
								 "ISY_Password":"admin" },
 
		{"name":"Autelis_Command",  "installed":true, "stack":"Autelis_Command",
			"IP":"192.168.1.230", "protocol":"TCP", "port":"6000", "Object":"PL"},
 
		{"name":"Autelis_Broadcast","installed":true, "stack":"Autelis_Broadcast",
			"IP":"192.168.1.255", "protocol":"UDP", "port":"7890", "Object":"PL"},
 
		{"name":"GC1", "device":"SerialConverter",  "manufacturer":"GlobalCache",
			"model":"GC-100-12",  "ip":"192.168.1.70", "protocol":"TCP",
			 "serial":2, "ir":6, "relays":3, 
			"serialPorts":[{"name":"SP1",   "port":4999, "connector":"1:1"},
					 {"name":"SP2",   "port":5000, "connector":"2:1"}],
			"relayPorts": [{"name":"RP1",    "port":4998, "connector":"3:1"}, 
					{"name":"RP2",   "port":4998, "connector":"3:2"}, 
					{"name":"RP3",   "port":4998, "connector":"3:3"}],
			"irPorts":    [{"zone":1, "port":4998, "connector":"4:1"}, 
					{"zone":2, "port":4998, "connector":"4:2"},
					{"zone":3, "port":4998, "connector":"4:3"}, 
					{"zone":4, "port":4998, "connector":"5:1"}, 
					{"zone":5, "port":4998, "connector":"5:2"}, 
					{"zone":6, "port":4998, "connector":"5:3"}] },
 
		{"name":"GC2", "device":"SerialConverter", "manufacturer":"GlobalCache",
			"model":"iTachIP2IR", "ip":"192.168.1.71", "protocol":"TCP",
			"serial":0, "ir":3, "relays":0, 
			"irPorts": [{"zone":1, "port":4998, "connector":"1:1"}, 
				     {"zone":2, "port":4998, "connector":"1:2"}, 
				     {"zone":3, "port":4998, "connector":"1:3"}] },
             {"name":"GC3", "device":"SerialConverter", "manufacturer":"GlobalCache", 
			"model":"iTachIP2IR", "ip":"192.168.1.72", "protocol":"TCP", 
			"serial":0, "ir":3, "relays":0, 
			"irPorts": [{"zone":1, "port":4998, "connector":"1:1"}, 
				     {"zone":2, "port":4998, "connector":"1:2"}, 
				     {"zone":3, "port":4998, "connector":"1:3"}] 
],     // end of interface configuration entries for "Systems"
"devices":[ {"name":"Master_TV",    "type":"IR",     "rmt":"MTV", "manufacturer":"Vizio",
		"model":"E552LV", "iface":"GC1", "zone":2, "path":"Vizio_TV", "IRid":"VIZ"},
	     {"name":"Master_Tivo",  "type":"IR",     "rmt":"TVO", "manufacturer":"Tivo",
		"model":"Premiere", "iface":"GC1", "zone":2, "path":"Tivo", "IRid":"TVO" },
	     {"name":"Master_Dune",  "type":"IR",     "rmt":"DUN", "manufacturer":"Dune HD",
		"model":"Base 3.0", "iface":"GC1", "zone":2, "path":"Dune_Player", "IRid":"DUN" },
	     {"name":"Master_SWT",   "type":"IR",     "rmt":"SWT", "manufacturer":"DVDO",
		 "model":"Quick6", "iface":"GC1", "zone":2, "path":"DVDO_Quick6", "IRid":"SWT" },
	     {"name":"Guest_TV",     "type":"IR",     "rmt":"GTV", "manufacturer":"Insignia", 
		"model":"ZRC-101",  "iface":"GC1", "zone":4, "path":"Insignia_TV", "IRid":"ISG" },
	     {"name":"Guest_STB",    "type":"IR",     "rmt":"GST", "manufacturer":"Cisco", 
		"model":"3250HD", "iface":"GC1", "zone":4, "path":"SciAtl_4200HD", "IRid":"STB" },
	     {"name":"Kitchen_TV",   "type":"IR",     "rmt":"KTV", "manufacturer":"Insignia",
		"model":"ZRC-101", "iface":"GC1", "zone":1, "path":"Insignia_TV", "IRid":"ISG" },
	     {"name":"Kitchen_STB",  "type":"IR",     "rmt":"KST", "manufacturer":"Cisco",
		"model":"3250HD", "iface":"GC1", "zone":1, "path":"SciAtl_4200HD", "IRid":"STB" },
	     {"name":"Aqualink",     "type":"TCP",    "rmt":"AQU", "manufacturer":"Jandy", 
		"model":"RS_4",     "path":"JandyAqualink" }
	    ], // end of interface configuration entries for Devices
 
 "modules":[ {"name":"ISY99_System", "id":"ISY", 
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes ISY99i"}, 
 	      {"name":"Homeseer",     "id":"HS",  
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes Homeseer" }, 
 	      {"name":"IRdevices",    "id":"IR", 
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes IRdevices" }, 
 	     {"name":"Autelis",      "id":"PL",  
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes Autelis Pool Control" },
 	     {"name":"PictureFrame", "id":"PF",  
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes Digital Picture Frame" }, 
 	     {"name":"HouseModes",   "id":"HM",  
				"log":"Interface Configuration: Includes House Modes" } 
] // End of interface  Configuration for Modules
}, // End of Interface configuration

The Configuration entry for the Office which contains lighting devices but is typical for all lighting devices is as follows:

{ "devices":[ {"typ":"ISY", "room":"Office", "cls":"Device", "dvc":"Light", 
		"name":"Desk Light", "ID":"LT", "ISY":{"adr":"19.EF.E6"   },  
		"display":[{"type":"title",   "join":"s301", "source":"room+name",  "list":"l3" },
			    {