Announcing the j9 Automation Engine v0.11

I'm proud to announce the release of an update to the j9 Automation Engine software. This release introduces User Accounts, new drivers and fixes. It is available for immediate download here.

Releases are not usually made just two weeks after a prior release, however because User Account support is a significant product milestone an exception has been made for this release.

Here is a list of the major enhancements: (A longer, more detailed list can be viewed here.)

User Accounts
User accounts prevent unauthorized access to the system and allow for limiting parts of the system from certain users. Each user account can optionally limit which days and the time of day the user is authorized to use the system, which touchscreens the user is authorized to view, individual touch screen control access, and different max/min values for slider controls.

New Device Support
Support for the Extron Matrix 100/200 Switcher Series and preliminary support for the Mi Casa Verde Vera device have been added.

Miscellaneous
Touch screens can now be marked as top level touch screens and the "Select a Touch Screen..." window can be filtered to only show top level touch screens. This helps reduce the clutter in the window when you have a large number of inner touch screens. The PocketPC Touch Screen Viewer start-up has been streamlined to provide a better user experience. This version also fixes several reported issues.

Documentation
The Quick Start guide has been updated and new documentation added for Device Configuration and Diagnostics and Rule Configuration.

Screenshots
Visit the screenshots page to see it in action.

Many thanks to those who helped with testing.

Johnny

I should also point out that due to the new 'Top Level' touch screen attribute, user's upgrading from previous versions will NOT see any touch screens in the Touch Screen Viewer's "Select a Touch Screen..." window. Simply uncheck the "Only show top level touch screens" checkbox to view your touch screen interfaces. This is because none of your existing touch screens will be set as top level touch screens.

New installs have 3 touch screens marked as top level and therefore will not experience the symptoms described above.

Johnny

A new update (v0.11.0.6) is available for download.

Although this update is fairly small it provides a significant enhancement for ease of use. The action list editor and touch screen control device property bindings now allow the user to select lights, thermostats, security zones, and other identifiers by name. This means the user no longer needs to know for example that light #5 is the Dining Room light... you just choose Dining Room from the list.

Ease of Use
You no longer need to look up id's for lights, security zones, etc, when using the action list editor and when using touch screen control device property bindings.

Drivers
The Mi Casa Verde Vera driver has been expanded to support thermostats.
The UPB and ACT TI103 X10 drivers now allows setting light levels with the touch screen slider control.
The UPB driver can now discover what links are associated with each upb device (it previously needed the upstart export file for this).

Driver SDK
Added built in support for receiving non-delimited text and binary data from serial and tcp I/O.

Miscellaneous
Improved performance of retrieving device information from client applications.
The top level touch screen check box now defaults to checked when creating a new touch screen.

Documentation
The Elk M1 Driver documentation has been updated to use the standard format and now has method details.

Fixes
The Touch Screen Builder's top level touch screen check box was not shown with a check mark when loading a top level touch screen.

Thanks,
Johnny

Documentation on all the j9 Automation Engine applications is now available on the Documentation web page.

This includes the much requested Touch Screen Builder application documentation.

Thank you for your patience.

Please note the documentation includes features that will be released in the upcoming release.

Johnny

I haven't looked at your app lately, but do you support xAP? If not, please consider adding a xAP driver.
Matt

mdonovan said:

I haven't looked at your app lately, but do you support xAP? If not, please consider adding a xAP driver.
Matt

Click to expand...

Matt, thanks for you interest.

There are 48 device drivers in the upcoming release, but xAP is not yet supported. It was on the list of future drivers and a user starting creating a 3rd party xAP driver. I'll follow up with him and see where he is at with it.

Johnny

Is anyone interested in testing the new W800RF32 driver or HAI Omni Pro II drivers for j9ae?

If you are interested in testing and providing feedback please send me a PM here or on the johnnynine.com forum.

Thanks,
Johnny

johnnynine said:

mdonovan said:

I haven't looked at your app lately, but do you support xAP? If not, please consider adding a xAP driver.
Matt

Click to expand...

Matt, thanks for you interest.

There are 48 device drivers in the upcoming release, but xAP is not yet supported. It was on the list of future drivers and a user starting creating a 3rd party xAP driver. I'll follow up with him and see where he is at with it.

Johnny

Click to expand...

That would be great. One other thing I would ask you to consider would be adding support for vbscript. That (for me and what I'm trying to do anyway) would be perfect. I need to look at the driver sdk one of these days and see what I could do..

Matt

mdonovan said:

That would be great. One other thing I would ask you to consider would be adding support for vbscript. That (for me and what I'm trying to do anyway) would be perfect. I need to look at the driver sdk one of these days and see what I could do..

Click to expand...

Matt could you please be more specific regarding your VBScript comment? The current (optional) scripting language is j9Script which is very similar to JavaScript with some minor differences. This scripting language can optionally be used when setting up rules or when responding to touch screen interaction and is a more advanced way of using action lists. Software developers can create native device drivers using any .net language however C# is the recommended language.

Johnny

johnnynine said:

mdonovan said:

That would be great. One other thing I would ask you to consider would be adding support for vbscript. That (for me and what I'm trying to do anyway) would be perfect. I need to look at the driver sdk one of these days and see what I could do..

Click to expand...

Matt could you please be more specific regarding your VBScript comment? The current (optional) scripting language is j9Script which is very similar to JavaScript with some minor differences. This scripting language can optionally be used when setting up rules or when responding to touch screen interaction and is a more advanced way of using action lists. Software developers can create native device drivers using any .net language however C# is the recommended language.

Johnny

Click to expand...

What I would like to be able to do is use vbscript code instead of J9Script. That's just my preference, that's all.

mdonovan said:

What I would like to be able to do is use vbscript code instead of J9Script. That's just my preference, that's all.

Click to expand...

Matt, thank you for your input. As you know the scripting language for j9ae is j9Script and will not likely change. J9Script is syntactically the same as JavaScript with a few small exceptions, for example j9Script is case-insensitive.

Full documentation for the j9Script language can be found here.

Action List Editor
j9Script is optional and is not required to use j9ae. Most typical automation commands and conditions can be programmed using the easy to use English grammar of the Action List Editor. j9Script can be added to any Action List and in some more complicated situations may be the only way to accomplish your objective.

Thanks again for your input,
Johnny

Several users have requested that I post a list of known issues with version 0.11 (the most recent public beta release).

Please note that ALL of these issues will be corrected in the upcoming 0.12 release.

• The web server component always responds with an error when browsing.
• The UPB driver did not support Generation I PIMs such as the Simply Automated UMC-DB9 PIM.
• The Elk M1 driver does not receive output states or keypad & probe temperatures on startup (but does receive change notifications).
• The Elk M1 driver uses 9600 baud instead of 115200 baud when using a serial connection.
• The CM15A driver's on/off/dim/bright methods did not work. Also updated incorrect method descriptions.
• The Date & Time driver would not work if the user entered geographic longitude and latitude coordinates for the location. Decimal coordinates worked though.

And just a sneak peak of what's coming soon:

• Insteon Support
• HAI Omni Pro II Support
• Media libraries and touch screen controls
• W800RF32 Support
• J. River Media Center Support
• 3rd party control via a web service / http url
• Two new sample touch screen interfaces
• Performance enhancements
• And much, much more!

Thank you for your support,
Johnny