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Author
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Topic: Announce: CQC Version 1.1 Released
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 12-26-2003 03:20 AM
   
Charmed Quark Software is pleased to announce the release of version 1.1 of CQC (Charmed Quark Controller), their Windows XP/2K based control and automation system. The 1.1 version is now available for download and purchase. You can download it and try it for 30 days without any restrictions. At any point during that time, you may purchase a license and convert your trial version to a license version without any interruptions. CQC is a fundamentally networked product and the purchase price licenses the CQC Master Server for your network as a whole, and you can run as many clients or servers as you wish.The 1.1 version introduces one major new feature, and a number of others which just couldn't be slipped into the 1.0 release under the wire. The release notes describes the details of the bugs and features added in this release, but here is a brief description of the major new features. Protocol Description Driver. In the 1.0 release, there were two ways to interface CQC to a device. C++ device drivers can be done, but those are only available to Charmed Quark. User written device drivers have been done in the CML language, which is CQC's powerful built in, object oriented language. CML is also used to write user control macros, and it's general purpose nature allows you to get even the most complex devices under control; however, it's very generality has proven a bit much to bite off by less technical users. In order to make it easier for end users to create their own device interfaces, an alternative method is now available in the form of the Protocol Description Language. Instead of writing your own driver, you will describe the protocol in a text file, and a generic driver will use that description to drive the communcations with the device. The protocol description language currently supports serial and socket based devices. When creating CML based drivers, the driver developer uses the standard CML graphical IDE to do the development. This powerful debugging environment is a huge boon to driver debugging. However, this is not a possibility for protocol description based drivers, so a specialized graphical test harness is provided for testing protocol language based drivers offline before installing them on CQC. CML is still the prefered mechanism, because of it's power and flexibility, and some devices might be too complex to handle with the protocol description language, but this new protocol language based driver should allow many more people provide device interfaces, since most devices are consistent and simple enough to be handled this way. As always, if you do a quality driver for a device, and contribute it back to Charmed Quark for distribution in the product, you will get a free copy of CQC. If you keep the driver updated in future releases (usually just a matter of validating it still works ok), then you will get those upgrades for free as well.
Zoned IR Support. Until now, CQC has only supported 'open air' blasters, which just blast out into the open air and address any devices that their signals happen to reach. As of this release, the CQC IR architecture now supports zoned IR blasters, so that you can address specific devices for IR blasting events. This is particularly important when you want to control more than one of a given type of device. With an open air blaster, they would all respond to the signal the same. With a zoned blaster, each device is addressed via a cabled blaster that sticks onto the front of the device in most cases.
This version includes a driver for CQC's first zoned IR device, the Global Cache GC-100. The GC-100 is actually a multi-function box, which is ethernet based which is very nice. It can include variable numbers of zoned IR blasters, sensors, and contact closures. CQC will sense the available features and adjust accordingly. The sensors allow you to read whether a device's front panel is putting out light, i.e. whether it is on or off. Also included in this version is support for the Home-Electro Ira-2 IR receiver, which is similar to the IRMan. Both devices allow you to train CQC to invoke user configured events based on particular IR remote button presses. CQC already supported the USB-UIRT, RedRat2, and IRMan.
Lexicon MC-12 Driver. An early cut of the MC-12 driver was included in the 1.0 version, but this version includes a much improved version which is more robust and includes more features, and supports the V3 MC-12 software. This driver is provided by Eric Bariaux at www.tinsys.com. CQC also supports the Lexicon MC-1, and eventually Eric's driver will probably become an integrated driver that supports the MC-1, MC-8, and MC-12.
HD Leeza Driver. At the time that the 1.0 release came out, the HD Leeza's firmware was still in a pretty early stage, so the driver was fairly limited and not terribly robust. In this version, the HD Leeza driver has been updated to work with the latest, 5.5.55, firmware, which is more robust and provides more information. Denon 3800 DVD Player. The Denon 3800 is one of the least expensive serially controllable DVD players, and it has a full and robust protocol, so it is a great choice for people who want to create a highly controllable system. Generally speaking, only the most megabuck DVD players provide any external control capabilities. David Hays provided this driver, and it is based on the new protocol description language. Variables Driver. This driver doesn't support a device, it just exists to allow you to define any driver fields you want. The driver will then create this list of driver fields, and you can use them as network wide variables which can be used in your macros to maintain state information above and beyond device state information. For instance, you might want to define a 'mood' for your control system, and have all of your macros react to the current mode. So you could define an enumerated field in the variables driver, with say values of Party, Night, Day, and Evening, and you can set this field any time and any subsequently invoke macros can react to the current mode by reading this field and adjust their actions appropriately. Volume Control Widget. The user drawn interface system has a new rotary volume control widget which allows you to adjust the value of numeric field with small ranges (32 to 128), such as volume fields. It works like a standard rotary volume knob, with a small red LED that you can drag around the center of the knob to set the value. Because CQC is inherently secure and account based, you can also set per-user type limits on the volume control widget. So you can allow, for instance, system admins and power users to have the full range of control, but limit normal and limited users to a max of -5db. This kind of account based security is a powerful feature of CQC not found in other products. Access to drawn interfaces is also controlled by user account type.
There are also some important bug fixes and smaller improvements, but those are the highlights. If you have any questions, please let us know. We always want to hear your feedback, even when brutal. Feel free to take advantage of the trial period to download it and try it out. The uninstaller will remove the product without any danger of destablizing your system, because CQC does not install or modify any system files. So it is safe enough to try out.
If you are interested in using CQC, but find that even the new protocol description language is more than you can handle, consider shipping us the devices you want supported and we will do the driver for you in exchange for being able to get the device under control. We will normally need it for a couple weeks plus shipping in either direction. In terms of coming attractions, here are the items currently on the slab: Device Drivers. There are a number of devices currently in the queue to be supported. These include:
- Theta Dreadnaught which has a serial control option that can be installed
- Tira/Tira-2 IR device
- Centerstage CS-2
- Anthem AVM20 or NAD T762, according to which one the customer buys
- Powerlinc USB X-10 controller. CQC currently supports the serial version of this device, but the USB version is also in the list of things to take care of.
- ZenSys Z-Wave wireless appliance/lighting control. We continue to work with ZenSys to support their technology, which is a wireless and robust replacement for the troublesome X-10 technology currently available for no-prewired appliance and lighting control. The first USB based Z-Wave based devices should be out after the end of the year and we will be working with them as soon as possible.
Features. In terms of upcoming features there is just one big one for the next release (1.2), which will be a new optionally purchaseable feature. This will be a subsystem for controlling GUI applications, which is commonly required by HTPC owners. Currently CQC has a passthrough driver for Girder to allow people to use CQC while maintaining their investment in Girder software application control, but as of 1.1 CQC will be able to manage this functionality itself. CQC's powerful and elegant architecture for external devices will be extended to software applications, so that a single and consistent mechanism can be used to control applications and devices in a seamless way. You will then be able to benefit from CQC's highly integrated and network distributed front and back end services, big picture control and automation architecture, and provide your HTPC front end, all in one powerful, network distributed package with a single price and a single point of configuration and management. YOu won't have to struggle to understand multiple packages, or struggle to understand how to integrate multiple systems that were never designed to work together.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 12-30-2003 02:27 AM
I just finished the Dreadnaught driver, so if anyone is waiting for it, I'd love to have some sanity checking done by someone else before I have to send the Dreadnaught back.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 12-31-2003 07:13 PM
I just uploaded a new Get Started section (under the main page, www.charmedquark.com , in the list of links on the left) that I've been working on for the last 4 or 5 days. This is a much better organized, more complete guide to control and automation systems and CQC's implementation of such, how you use it, how it is organized and so forth. Hopefully this will help people get up the learning curve much more easily. I'll continue to improve the docs, as always, but this is a major new chunk so if you were interested in CQC but found it a bit hard to get your head around, you might want to take a look at this new section.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 01-10-2004 04:31 PM
The 1.1.1 release will be out on probably monday or tuesday. This one mainly fixes a few bugs, but it also includes:
1. A Theta Dreadnaught driver. The Dreadnaught has a serial control option, which is very nice and unusual for amps.
2. An Extron System 8/10+ driver, for the nice Extron A/V switchers that are pretty widely used in nicer home theaters.
3. A 'special actions' button for the interface designer. It's there to support a few special case system actions (as apposed to user defined actions that the regular action button does.) For now, there are only two, but they are important. One is to invoke the blanker window and the other is to exit. There will be others added later.
4. Per-device IR repeat count. Some blasters support a 'repeat count', which indicates how many times the IR command should be repeated. Some devices are more sensitive and might take more than one repeat as multiple events, and some are more deaf and need a number of repeats before they will see it. In this version, you can set that repeat count on a per-device model basis (i.e. per each IR based device you want to control), so that you can tune it as required.
5. A driver packaging system that will allow me to handle the scenario where drivers arrive between official releases. I can now package them up into a single file with house keeping and versioning info and put them on the web site. You can then download them and import them via the admin interface. As more third party drivers are being done, this becomes more important so that there is an easy way to get these drivers into user's hands as soon as they are available.
I decided to do this release and get these things in place before moving forward to 1.2, which will include a new GUI application control system. Since that one will probably take a month or so to do, I wanted to get these issues taken care of and the driver packager in place so that the other drivers being worked on won't have to wait for the 1.2 release to become easily available.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 01-28-2004 03:16 PM
There will be a 1.1.2 release this weekend or early next week, which fixes some problems and gets some new drivers available. It will include:1. Denon 3803 driver
2. NAD T762 driver
3. Lexicon DC-2 driver (basically a confirmation that the MC-1 driver supports the V4 DC-2.)
4. A number of small bug fixes and new small new features. The primary reason for the interrim release before 1.2 is that the 3803/T762 drivers brought up an issue, and those drivers wouldn't have been releaseable until it was fixed, and I really needed to get those drivers out.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-02-2004 05:20 PM
Ok, version 1.1.2 is now posted. It is a minor patch release, but does have a good number of small fixes and useful improvements. It also includes new drivers for the Denon 3803 A/V receiver, NAD T762 A/V receiver, and Focus Enhancements CS-2 video scaler, and as discussed in the previous post confirmation that the Lexicon MC-1 driver works correctly with the DC-2.
[This message has been edited by Dean Roddey (edited 02-02-2004).] |
Squintz
Junior Member Posts: 12
From:
Registered: Oct 2003
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posted 02-05-2004 01:37 PM
I never heard of this befor so i decided to install it and give it a try and when i click on any of the installed apps it ask for a User Name and Password... I never set up a username and password so what do i enter to get the program running? |
Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-05-2004 05:37 PM
Since you have to have an account to do anything, the product ships with an initial default administrative account, with user name of "Admin" and password of "Welcome". So log in using that, and then change the password to protect the system.All of this stuff is covered in the installation and configuration documentation. Use the Technical link on the left of the main web page, and then read through the first few pages before you spend too much time doing things, since you will want to know how it works before getting into too deeply.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-13-2004 10:43 PM
A first version of a driver for the Arcam AV8 A/V Processor was just poasted. It is available as a driver pack on the driver doc page for this driver. Feel free to download it and try it and provide some feedback.Be aware that it is subject to some changes if issues are found, but overall it seems quite stable and shouldn't change to any great degree, other than perhaps some more AV8 functionality support being added.
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Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-20-2004 03:39 PM
Here is a nice little interface that a customer of mine did for the Arcam AV8 A/V Processor. He loaned me one so that I could do a driver and he whipped up this interface, which is pretty cool looking.  |
Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 03-11-2004 01:23 PM
Charmed Quark Software is proud to announce the 1.1.3 release of CQC (The Charmed Quark Controller), its Windows based, distributed control and automation software suite. CQC provides a secure, network distributed, highly integrated, control and automation software suite, including a powerful backend architecture, powerful user drawn interface system, user based security, object oriented macro and driver development language with graphical IDE, supporting X-10, IR, socket, serial, and USB devices.
What's New in 1.1.3
This is a 'minor' upgrade of the 1.1 version, but it does offer some very useful new features and includes a number of bug fixes. The most significant changes are: - Arcam AV8 Driver. This release includes a new driver for the Arcam AV8 A/V Processor, which is a pretty powerful box for a good price, and the control protocol is fairly extensive also. - SmartHome 1132U USB X-10 Controller This release includes a driver for the SmartHome USB X-10 controller. CQC already supported the widely used serial version of this controller (1132S), but that verion is no longer being sold, and this one is quite superior anyway. It requires no drivers on the Windows side, since it is an HID type USB device. - User Drawn Interface Enhancements There are a number of nice enhancements to the user drawn interface system, including a new 'state' system, an auto-repeating inc/dec button, size to fit menu option, and a translation feature for dynamic text widgets. - Marantz VP-12S2 Driver Eric Bariaux of www.tinsys.com has provided a driver for the Marantz VP-12S DLP projector. This is a 'first look' drop for people to check out and comment on, though it should be pretty stable. What's Coming Up The major feature in the next version, which will be 1.2, is going to be the extension of CQC's powerful device control model to GUI applications, a la Girder but better because it will be built into a powerful integrated front and back end. So you HTPC folks can have a single system that provides the two way active GUI, the powerful distributed back end architecture, great two way device control, security, powerful macro capabilities, and application control all in one highly integrated package. There are some drivers that appear to be very likely at this point. They will be released as driver packs as they become available, and the formally included in the 1.2 release when it arrives.
- HD Leeza driver update, to get it up to the latest firmware version
- JPK DMX512 lighting controller
- Enerzone thermostat
- RCS keypads and thermostats
As always, if you do a good driver for CQC, and let us ship it with the product, we'll give you a free copy of CQC. ANd if you keep it updated in future releases (which mostly will just be a matter of verifying it's still happy), we'll give you the upgrades for free as well.If you really want to use CQC, but need drivers for your devices and cannot do them yourself, please consider shipping us the device for a few days so that we can do the driver for you and return the device. We want to support as many devices as possible and want to do whatever we can to make CQC a useful tool for your automation needs.
Test Drive It
CQC comes with a 30 day trial period. So just download the Zip file (Download link on the left of the main web page), unzip it, read the release notes, look at the Get Started section of the web site which will give you an overview of how CQC works and want it can do for you, and then install it and use it unencumbered for 30 days. At any time during that period you can purchase a license and upgrade your trial version to a licensed version without any interruption. CQC is a networked product, so the license is for your network, and only applies to the machine on which you run the CQC Master Server. You can run as many other clients or servers as you need and your network capacity allows. So give it a spin and see what it's like. If you have any questions, you can e-mail us at support@charmedquark.com, or better yet sign up with our support forums (link is at that bottom of the main web page), and start a discussion of your issues and questions. This way, other users can benefit from the discussion, and other old timers can help you out if I'm not immediately available. We look forward to your feedback, whether happy or brutal, since it's the only way we can understand what works for you.
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ajhostetler
Junior Member Posts: 1
From: Enon Valley, Pa USA
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 04-20-2004 01:16 PM
Hi Dean, I'm currently building a new home and I'm interested in incorporating (at leat to start) a small Automated system. I would like to be able to control lighting and HVAC mostly and I don't want to invest bundles of cash. Your software seems perfect with the only drawback I've seen so far is that you don't currently have any thermostats listed under supported products. I see above that you mention a couple being added with the release of verion 1.2. When will this new version be released. Also for controlling my lights, I don't mind installing additional wiring for it and I'm hesitant to go with x10 controllers as I've heard they can be unreliable and (according to your website) treadfully slow. Do you or anyone else know of any wired systems I could use? I was thinking of a simple relay system but dimming functionality would be nice. |
Dean Roddey
Member Posts: 61
From: Mountain View, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 04-20-2004 04:12 PM
The thermos didn't make it this time, because the person who was going to send them to me didn't get a chance to. However, anything you want to use, if you just have it shipped to me first, I'll do the drivers for you for free in return for getting access to the devices so that I can do the drivers. So don't let lack of support for what you want to use get in your way. We can get the drivers done.In terms of thermostats and such, one option is Reconsys (RCS) which has a line of those types of accessory type widgets that are, AFAIK, good choices in terms of price vs. quality. For lighting, I think that the Lutron 3000 series is reasonable for medium sized, hardwired lighting. But, in the end, I'm on the software end and not the best person to suggest hardware. I'm just willing to support whatever you want to use. Why don't you contact me directly at droddey@charmedquark.com and we can discuss it further.
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