Cortex v22

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It always seems that by some strange synchronicity major Cortex upgrades appear when I have visitors.

Since I have had some hiccups on past upgrades I try to avoid that "I'll just quickly upgrade Cortex whilst boiling the kettle" urge in case something goes wrong. But this time I just couldn't resist and ran the upgrade.

No problems at all but some really interesting new features.

One which I think is a timely addition is the database inspector. This runs through your database looking for anomalies. In my case it spotted that I had no external doors defined. I could swear that I had set these up when the concept was first added, so I have to assume they got lost during a previous upgrade. Since I can be guilty of failing to read release notes this may have been flagged up and I just didn't spot it.

A second run after fixing those found that certain doors were not reporting their state into the rooms on both sides. Since it is a long time since I added the door switches I could well have missed these.

Cortex v22 also adds a slew of camera data management features. Since I managed to fill my hard disk up a couple of times these are really welcome. They attack the problem from several angles, pruning old files, setting a space allocation, integrating a low disk space warning and finally having the ability to stop recording if a critically low level is reached (since the pruning runs as a daily cleanup task).

There is also a new motor control logic object with the ability to work with several different motor winding schemes, and timed runs as well as limit switches. This would be ideal for things like curtains, screens, Velux windows etc. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a connection scheme for motors with integrated logic, like the Autoglide curtain rails. Since these hide the winding control and limiting internally, the easiest way to integrate control is through the manual override connector. The object is gagging to control my curtains so hopefully this control scheme can be added in at some point.

The last new feature I have noted so far is the support for "layers" in the plan view. This makes it easy to "de-clutter" the plan, whilst quickly being able to bring lesser used items back into view for editing. Since objects can exist on many layers concurrently it might be more accurate to call them "view sets", but I am not going to quibble about the name since I am pleased to have the functionality.

There's loads more to explore but that's all for now !

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David, newbe just playing with Idratex in holday home - remote phone control heating so far -- problems with very quiet external Zoom voice/fax modem -- did your internally installed board have any volume problems and was the output to phone volume adjustable, which doesn't seem possibe on the external model I'm using. I will in the next 12 months be fully automating this property and have found reading your installation diary fascinating..Thank you ...Like you am awaiting info on (UK DFPs) I don't read Polish, but pictures look promising !!
Yours Grant

Hi Grant - Sorry for delay, I was hoping to get a chance to try the audio and report back. Not had a chance so far, but I will try it soon and let you know.

Oh Dear. I tried quite hard tonight and couldn't get any output at all. The Modem doesn't seem to present an output audio device, despite using the full duplex device driver. After much googling it seems that this modem doesn't support TAPI for audio. So it only works with the supplied program which I think is IS-101 based. The search continues. I may be going back to eBay !

On further experimentation I find that using auto-dialler I can get the modem to ring my mobile and play a message and also respond the keypad commands. It's a little quiter than I'd prefer but usable.

So it looks like the issues are related to getting the damn thing to auto-answer properly. Using manual answer from Cortex does answer but seems to just produce a crackly line.

I've got a little further in getting voice output to work correctly but auto-answer is still not working correctly. See update at http://www.gumbrell.com/archives/2007/03/30/decent_uk_caller_id_modem.php

If I manually answer from Cortex I get a very audible speech synthesis using "Mary for Telephone" SAPI 4 voice.

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This page contains a single entry by David published on August 26, 2007 11:13 AM.

Automated curtains was the previous entry in this blog.

Colour coding of connections items is the next entry in this blog.

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