Category Archives: xPL

xPL

xAP Floorplan

Following on from the article that I wrote for the Automated Home web site back in 2010 where I divulged some of the details about my HA set-up (“Four Nodes“), I had
several people ask me to give some more information about what I use to control all of the various aspects that make up the system, so I followed up with a post to the UKHA mailing list:

I’m a big fan of the xAP and xPL protocols, so nearly all of my hardware has been xAPped or xPLed in some shape or form and I use the excellent xAP Floorplan (mi4) as the central control application.  I’ve been using Floorplan for many years and chose it over the likes of
HomeSeer, HouseBot, etc as it’s written entirely with xAP in mind and has therefore the broadest support of xAP Schemas.  It also supports xPL in the form of bridging / translation, plus James, the author, is remarkably responsive to the many “can you just…..” emails I’ve sent him over the years 😉

Anyway, xAP Floorplan is a remarkably capable application with a built in scripting engine (based on VBScript), database support and web interface for “floorplan” maps (created using the excellent FloorPlanner web site) and the ability to create your own custom web pages and there’s far too much functionality to comment on in this short message, but I’d recommend it to anybody to give it a try.

Below are a number of screen shots of the web interface to give an idea of the level of integration that is possible, they should be pretty self-explanatory:

Loft
Loft
First Floor
First Floor
Ground Floor
Ground Floor
Gardens
Gardens (note the popup showing ZoneMinder integration)
Status
Status (example of a custom web page showing current status information)

Thanks for reading,

Martyn Wendon