[misterhouse-announce] Version 2.43 posted on 02/03/2001

[Bruce W. <br...@mi...>]

Version 2.43 was just uploaded to:
  http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/download.html
  http://misterhouse.net/download.html


It has only been 2 weeks, but you guys have been busy with enough changes
that the list of updates was looking ripe for a release!


New Features:

- Switched to a new AOL AIM module from CPAN, so mh/test/internet_im.pl
works better. Like internet_jabber.pl (which is currently not working), we
can now send and receive messages.

- Add a restart option to &exit_pgm and modified mhl.bat (unix mhl did not
need any updates) so we can have mh restart itself with the new
mh/code/common/mh_control 'Restart Mister House' command. This will only
work if you start mh with mh/bin/mhl (l stands for loop).

- Bill Sobel suggested adding new Generic_Item methods tie_time and
tie_filter. tie_time will set the item if the specified time_cron or
time_now string is true. tie_filter will disable control of the item if the
specified filter returns true. Examples are in mh/code/examples/test_tie.pl.
Here are 2 examples:


   $fountain -> tie_time('10PM', OFF);
   $fountain -> tie_filter('state $windy eq ON', ON);


- Bill had 2 other ideas to help in event logging. All the tie_* methods now
support an optional log message. We also can now specify a specific logfile
using a log=logfile prefix to any print_log text. For example:


  print_log 'log=test1.log Logged in code_dir/test1.log';
  $fountain -> tie_time('0 17 * * * ', ON, 'log=fountain Fountain turned
on';


These will go into the data_dir directory. We also moved the default print,
speak, and error logs from the code_dir to the data_dir directory.

- Added a print_log ``Running: xyz'' when Voice_Cmd xyz is run

- Clive Freedman sent in a FAQ of common Perl and mh coding errors in
mh/doc/faq_damnblast.html (also linke in faq.html).

Examples, Bug Fixes, and Minor Changes:

- Kees Cook updated the Unix SerialPort module to work better with fast I/O,
Solaris, AIX, and OpenBSD.

- Mike Pearce found a bug in $Season.

- Craig Schaeffer had a patch for iButton.pm read_dir and read_windspeed.

- Roy Thompson updated X10_IrrigationController to support 16 modules.

- Bill Sobel suggested adding the .5, .25, and .1 second flags
$New_Msecond_500/250/100. He added these to a few of hist modules in mh/lib
to improve mh efficiency.

- Brad Reed fixed CM11.pm to correctly reset the internal CM11 clock to the
right time. We also changed mh to set the CM11 clock and reset the buffer on
mh startup.

- Fenghua Zong found the periodic 'Saving object states' would start working
only after an mh pause.

- Scott Johnston discovered we inadvertantly changed the unix mh.ini
sound_program default from play.

- Scott Johnston also sent in a fix for a new clicktv.com url in
get_tv_grid.

- Timothy Spaulding suggested we have a -no_log speak option to avoid
printing spoken text to the console if -tk 0.

- Brian Paulsen made some more improvements to the iButton code.

- Brad Reed, through painstaking testing, discovered the cause of the cause
of his CM11 errors. It turns out the fork we were doing when
voice_text=viavoice caused the child process to reset all the serial ports!
We also merged in his voice_text=viavoice patch from his website.

- Evan Grahaet noticed a problem when setting timers with the web interface.
Now the timer will start only when the time field (not the text field) has
changed.

- Bill Sobel sent in these updates:

  Compool: fixed solar and air temp calculations (turns out
  they are calculated differently then pool and spa temps)

  Read_table_A: added support for stargate thermostat items

  Stargate485.pm: added support for stargate thermostats
  (RCS 485 thermostats, should be able to be used even
  without the stargate eventually).  Also fixed RTS bug
  that caused it to hog the serial line.

  Xantech.pm: string comparison fix (!= changed to ne)

  HomeBase.pm  Added a send_telephone function and a .ini
  setting to disable receiving x10 events from the homebase

- Stuart Grimshaw removed mh/lib/SMS_Item.pm (for sending SMS messages to
mobile phones in Europe) at the request of the http://www.smsboy.com guys.

- Clive Freedman update get_tv_info to add hypertext links for setting VCR,
highlighting the selected key-word, early morning searching, debugged
searching for shows in progress, UK dates, and changed plural and upper-case
recognition.

- Tony Drumm noticed that he could not get his CM17 firecracker to work
under linux until he did h2ph linux/posix_types.h. We added that to
mh/bin/configure.

- Chris Witte suggested we reuse and expose the X10_Item set_with_timer
timer object.

- Fixed a Time::HiRes error on restoring a timer on Unix.

- Added a $Power_Supply object to mh/code/common/mh_control.pl. Currently
only detects a power reset from a CM11.

- Added File_Item get_index to replace a poorly named index method.

- Updated the mh SNPP.pm module so snpp_pager would work.

- Added a tk_startup_cmd option. Useful for debugging when you want to have
the tk command list start with a specfic set of commands.

- Added a display append option (e.g. appending messages to the AOL AIM chat
window).

- Added Generic_Item toggle state so we toggle devices ON/OFF like this:


     set $light TOGGLE   if new_second 10;
or
     set $light 'toggle' if new_second 10;


- mh.ini parm html_select_length (controls when drop down select forms are
used) now also applies to the Items web menus.

- Fixed a problem with unix computer uptime with uptimes > 40 days.


Bruce