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jaysonc
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Joined: October 21 2007
Location: United States
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Posts: 26
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| Posted: May 07 2008 at 00:37 | IP Logged
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Is anyone using an ELK-IP232 (or any other ethernet serial port bridge) to
connect their Insteon PLC or PLM to powerhome? If so, any issues to be
aware of?
I would like to move my host machine to a new location where I can not
realistically connect my PLC/PLM. I was hoping I could use a ethernet serial
port to put the PLC/PLM in a better location.
Bonus points if anyone has any experience they can share using an ethernet
serial point in conjunction with a 1wire serial interface.
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Jayson
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jaysonc
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Joined: October 21 2007
Location: United States
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Posts: 26
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| Posted: May 11 2008 at 00:12 | IP Logged
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So an update and reference for others that may be considering the use of
a serial to ethernet adapter for their Insteon PLC.
A quick trip to my local home automation store Friday and I had an Elk-
IP232 to test with.
After 36 hours everything seems to be working just fine. The connection
has been very solid and the solution is able to gracefully handle restarts
of both the Powerhome software, powerhome server and the ethernet to
serial adapter. Obviously, all the better solution would be to have UPS
capacity for each component, but everything seems to be able to recover
without a UPS.
The only tricks to report are that the port must be set to 4800 baud and
Handshaking set to none. These values seem to be requirements for the
Smarthome SDM communication with the PLC.
Now on to some 1wire testing...
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jaysonc
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Joined: October 21 2007
Location: United States
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Posts: 26
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| Posted: May 24 2008 at 01:21 | IP Logged
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Well, some additional details for anyone looking at using a serial to ethernet adapter.
After further testing I am not as thrilled about using the serial to ethernet adapters as I was initially. It works, but does not seem to be rock solid reliable. At first I though it might just be a bad PLC, but I am now seeing the same issues with a UPB PIM. The serial ports seem to be very sensitive to the speed and handshake setting. Unfortunately, the remote nature of the port does not seem to allow for the control necessary to make the power line interfaces work completely.
I moved to USB to ethernet adapters and everything has been working now for almost 2 weeks without issues or odd behavior. Both the Insteon PLC and UPB PIM work very well.
Now I can keep my PowerHome server in my office, which is a nearly power line black hole in my house (Damn dirty UPS) and the power line interfaces close to the breaker panel for a nice strong signal.
For anyone interested, this is the final piece that has allowed me to decommission a computer and run my HA server as a virtual machine under OS X.
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Jayson
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Topic: Serial to Ethernet adapters
