CBus Driver Software - Issues

A couple of years ago I integrated CBus into my companies automation software using CGate. I have recently been told of a new integration product called the CBus Driver Software which I downloaded and started testing in May. This driver is a DLL which will provide faster throughput and response times than CGate.

I had a number of issues with the DLL when trying to implement it into our product:
1. If I used the DLL directly in my app it would cause spurious problems with other components in our app.
2. I tried implementing it in an external application which worked beautifully until I wanted to have the app communicate with our automation app using ip sockets. As soon as the socket connected the dll would stop reporting CBus events.

That was Driver Version 3.2.

I have today downloaded the current version 3.4 and have tried to run the VB example and although I can see it triggering the connect event it doesn't seem to work for sending and receiving CBUS events.

I am using VS.NET 2003 and am keen to get this interface working. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

The driver ships with some sample projects. One is written in VB.Net which is what I have used to test the current version. Could someone at Clipsal at least retest the VB.Net sample so I can ensure that I am not doing something very basic wrong.

Thanks in Advance.

 

Thanks ashleigh ... I really appreciate your efforts. I know its a total pain to look at code in a language you don't generally use.

Do you know if anyone has gotten the dll working using another .NET language other then VB. Maybe I could use C# or C++ if thats the case. Otherwise maybe I should try and use it in VB6?

Thanks again ... John

 

Considering the fact that the dll won't run directly in our .NET app ... I might try and build a socket based interface for the dll using vb6.

Thanks again for your help. I'll advise this thread on progress.

 

Any News

Is there an update on this?

I am about to start building some .NET stuff to talk to C-Bus (whcih I will be happy to share when done). Not sure whether to try talking to the DLL, or whether to just talk to C-Gate.

Any thoughts?

Nick

 

Any News

Is there an update on this?

I am about to start building some .NET stuff to talk to C-Bus (whcih I will be happy to share when done). Not sure whether to try talking to the DLL, or whether to just talk to C-Gate.

Any thoughts?

Nick

 

Has anybody, other than CIS folk, got this DLL to work?

If so what language/compiler are you using.

I have spent most of the day trying to get it to work and got the same results as others.

Does anybody have this working with any microsoft language C++, C#, VB.net or anything else and care to share the secret to making this work.

Cheers

Rohan

 

I thought you were going to say that

I have thousands of dollars worth of MS compilers in lots of languages accross 3 seperate versions and can't get it to work. Now I'm not interested in the MS, Borland argument, but either way there is a lot of MS users out there and I'm thinking that it is not really a general purpose windows DLL if it won't work with one of the most popular development environments on the market.

Now I know it is unsupported and you worked hard to get it released in the first place and I appreciate the intent. But I'm just a bit disapointed that it looks like I have to either buy Borland or switch to Linux.

At first I thought I found the problem in five minutes as the set level function definition and call was short one argument in the VB example, but unfortunately no dice. I also noticed that quite a few of the functions don't have a return value, so whilst I know it didn't work because no light came on, I don't know why.

I realise that the code is essentially designed for imbedded micros and as such has no logging as such, but I'm wondering if you could somehow produce a modified one off debug version to help figure out what the issue is. Perhaps modify the set level function to return an int that represents why it failed. It looks like any of the functions that don't take parameters seem to work, but those that do fail (although there are exceptions to this rule as the comms functions appear to work)

Yes I still remember it is unsupported, but getting it to work with MS compilers would surley be good for the whole of mankind, and if necessary I will start a collection to errect a statue in your honour in my front yard if that is what it takes.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

Rohan

 

It is worth noting that the no cost version (can't come to calling it free) can be used for commercial use.

 

Has anyone tested this? If so, does it do the trick?

 

We haven't tested the turbo product, but it is basically a later version of the Borland C++ tool that we do use with the DLL. So hopefully it does work

 

I know how you feel, in reverse.

I'm at the point where I think I'll download the economically priced Turbo c# compiler Daniel & Richo pointed out and give that a go. (I remember paying over $300 for Turbo C++ V3.0 when it first came out)

Of course I havent even seen a Borland IDE in many years, so it could take me ages just to understand my way around it.

Anyway I am still keen to try and get to the bottom of the MS problem, have you had any thoughts about producing a debug version that I could help debug with? I know it will be a bit outside of normal company protocol, but it's only to figure out how to call this guy correctly.

The statue could turn into a fountain as well.......

Cheers

Rohan

 

Chance are this will have the same result as the MS one as it uses the same compiler (the C# compiler built into dot net). Give the C++ edition a try.