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wmx10 - A DockApp gui for controlling X10's

Firecracker kit through bottlerocket

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Author: Joshua Hawkins (jhawkins@osiris.978.org)

Installation

Please see the file "INSTALL".

Description

wmx10 provides a graphical user interface for controlling X10's Firecracker module. The dockapp is simply a front end to "bottlerocket", originally written by Tymm Twillman (tymm@acm.org) and can be obtained from:

http://mlug.missouri.edu/~tymm/

The Bottlerocket package which is an excellent command line based Firecracker controller.

The applet contains the bottlerocket code in the form of the following files:

br_cmd.h
br_cmd.c
br_translate.h

wmx10 simply takes advantage of bottlerocket's "x10_br_out" function call, and sends commands to the Firecracker device that way.

This version of wmx10 is based on Bottlerocket 0.04.

Using wmx10

wmx10 has several command line options. To view them, execute

wmx10 -h

To run the program, simply call it on the command line. To install it into your dock or Wharf, read the man page of your window manager.

The gui has several buttons and displays for controlling the Firecracker. They are as follows:

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|  HOUSE     <letter> |  <-- Displays the current house letter
|                     |
|   prev <num> next   |  <-- "prev" and "next" change the device number
|       OFF  ON       |  <-- These should be obvious...
|                     |
|    DIM    BRIGHT    |  <-- Dim or brighten the current lamp number
|      oooooooo       |  <-- Status display -
-----------------------                     - Green indicates the lamp
                                              is turned on or recently
                                              brightened. The indicator
                                              brightens and dims when
                                              the respective button is
                                              pushed.
                                            - Nothing (gray) indicates
                                              the device is off.

• To change the house number from the default of "A", you must specify so on the command line. For example:

wmx10 B

will use house code "B". The Firecracker kit provides house codes "A" through "P". Giving a value beyond these specs will cause wmx10 to abort.

Problems and Possible Solutions

Q: The gui comes up fine, however when I click on, it doesn't

work! What do I do?

1. There could be several problems. Make sure you:
   • Edited "wmx10.h" and changed the #define SERIAL_PORT to match the serial port your Firecracker device is on. The default value is "/dev/ttyS0" (COM 1 under DOS).
   • Look at the values in br_cmd.c for BitWait, Delay, HoldLoops. You may need to increase these values slightly. These are now bottlerocket routines, which you may direct questions to Tymm Twillman (tymm@acm.org).
2. It won't compile!
3. wmx10 requires several standard X11 libraries. Tested systems include at this point just Linux based ones (Redhat 6, Debian). Read the docs thoroughly before emailing me with any compilation problems.
4. I get permission denied errors!
5. You will probably need to be root to run this program, because you don't have permissions to access the serial port device. Making wmx10 setuid root will solve this problem as well, however consider the usual caveats that go with setuid root programs.
6. I have some other question that's not listed here.
7. Email me and I'll do my best to answer your question.

Copyright

wmx10 is Copyright (c) 1999 by Joshua Hawkins and licensed through the GNU General Public License. Read the COPYING file for the complete GNU license.