NOTICE
My involvement with xPL has come to an end. Automation has moved on considerably over the past few years, and it is now possible to buy a stand-alone controller off the shelf for a reasonable price, without having to spend hours writing your own code.
This website is being maintained as a record of my xPL development work up until 2011.
I have released the full source code of all my xPL projects into the public domain. You can download the archive from here.
Mal
A couple of fixes to xPLRFX regarding RFXSensors and the saving of the configuration files. These are now stored in the locations recommended by Microsoft, and not in the installation folder as before. Because of this, the major version number has been increased.
The format of the configuration files has not changed. If you are upgrading, you may make a copy of your config.xml and USBModules.xml files from the old installation folder, and copy them to C:\Program Data\xPL\xPLRFX or C:\Documents and Settings \[user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\xPL\xPLRFX depending on Windows version. Note that the folder may need to be unhidden.
Fix for problem in xPLRFX caused by Microsoft's handling of registry keys for 32-bit applications on 64-bit versions of Windows.
xPLHub and xPLExec updated to add version info to the registry.
The xPLDiag xPL network diagnostic tool has been updated to include version 1.80 of the CurrPorts utility. This should fix issues on Vista and Windows 7 where the name of the process bound to the xPL UDP port could not be identified.
Last year I planned to work on two major projects, xPLMPC (an xPL wrapper for the excellent Media Player Classic - Home Theater), plus a complete revision of the xPL support for Z-Wave.
Unfortunately neither project was completed. xPLMPC stalled when I changed my approach to triggering xPLMPC via my intranet movie menu. I have a system mostly in place now, but it will take a lot of cleaning up and documenting before anything can be released.
As for Z-Wave, there has been a great deal of progress. The project was far more ambitious than I had first imagined, and finding documentation and hardware to test with has been a challenge. I have now reached a point where I can communicate with Z-Wave devices via xPL, without relying on any commercial devlopment kits.
Due to the help I have received from the Open Source community in developing my Z-Wave code, I have decided to rework the Z-Wave side of my project into an Open Source collaboration called Open Z-Wave. This will allow me to give something back to the community, and hopefully act as a springboard for others to create free Z-Wave software for Windows and other platforms too. The Open Z-Wave website and first versions of the software (including an xPL application) should be launched early this year.
