Jeeves/Minder/HomeMinder/Thinkboxx New Lease Of Life

I have had several Jeeves/Minder/HomeMinder/Thinkboxx devices over the years, from way back when it was first released and shown on Towards 2000 on TV.

Recently I have moved house (yet again) and I have just reinstalled one of my Jeeves/Minder/HomeMinder/Thinkboxx devices at my new house.

I was aware that whilst the controller is still very functional and relevant, I knew the controlling software was not, and would not run on anything newer than windows XP. However before I committed myself to using a virtual machine for the software, I had a bit of a fiddle around to see what was the problem.

To cut a long story short, it seems it's the installer that won't run and not the actual software.

So the trick is to install the software on some sort of windows XP machine (physical or virtual) then copy the whole directory across to the same location on your newer machine. Create a shortcut to the executable and bob's your uncle.

I now have Thinkboxx V4.0.6 happily running on Windows 8.1 via a Lantronix UDS100 just for good measure.

Oh, and I know we were never supposed to mention the war... but I did once before and I think I got away with it.

Cheers

Rohan

 

And I'm happy to report it has now survived the upgrade to Windows 10

Cheers

Rohan

 

Rohan

I must say, my unit is still running perfectly after more than 15 years of service. I have not connected to it for over 3 years now (with a PC) and the clock is still within 15 seconds of the actual time! I also have the wireless reed switches on some windows that I have never replaced the batteries on. Still operating even though they send an 'I'm here' message every hour... pretty damn good I think.

BTW, I think it's OK to mention the war now

 

I wish this unit could rise again. I would really like to understand the communications and expand it.

Who does actually own the IP for it these days, as last I saw there was at least a 3 way fight going on.

I would love to read a story one day about the full history of the product, where it came from and the various companies that owned or licensed it over the years. Of course it would need to include all the behind the scenes juicy bits Perhaps there's a movie in it, after all its got to be as good a tale as Apple and Jobs

Cheers

Rohan

 

It is quite interesting! There are many opinions about the history but I must say I do know the true history, warts and all! Maybe over a beer sometime, I could share all of the juicier parts.

There are still some who want to bring it back to market, but I feel that it's day is done. You might find this interesting tho, back in early 2000, we planned to give it a simple web server so it could be accessed over the net (given DSL was a new thing then and we wouldn't need to have it slave off a PC with a dial-up connection) I guess that would have been an 'Internet of Thing' (singular ;-) ... ah, the memories...

 

Hi Rohan
About to do attempt to do the same thing and move my thinkboxx software from a windows vista system to windows 8. What about the cbus toolkit software, which version did you use with thinkboxx 4.0.6
Richard

 

Hi Richard,

I'm not quite sure what you mean, as Toolkit does not talk to Thinkboxx.

In the really old days of V1 & V2 C-Bus installation software (pre Toolkit) you could use the Jeeves/Minder/Thinkboxx as a PCI to program C-Bus units, but ever since Toolkit, that is no longer possible. In fact Toolkit can't even readdress a Minder, so if you need to do that then you would have to resurrect old V2 software somehow.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Hi Rohan
Sorry, I meant to say CBus V2 installation software, just wondering whether you tried getting that working on a windows 8 system as well?
How do you program your Cbus units , I still use the old Cbus v2 software so that the thinkboxx knows about cbus configuration changes such as any cbus wall switch function changes I make
Cheers
Richard

 

No, I retired the V2 software a long time ago. I'm guessing you don't have any post V2 units that V2 knows nothing about?

Thinkboxx released an application not on getting the group addresses out of Toolkit and imported into Thinkboxx, but it relied on an export function that is no longer there.

Given you are only concerned about your own installation and I'm assuming that doesn't change every day, just use Toolkit and add the changes to Thinkboxx by hand.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Thanks Rohan

Yes, I haven't had the need to add any Cbus 2 units in the last 8 years, everything has been working fine.
I'll need to check how to access the Cbus 2 network since the only interface I used to access the network units for changes has been through the thinkboxx and the Cbus 2 installation software. I haven't needed a serial or Ethernet module before on the Cbus 2 network because I could access them through the thinkboxx Cbus module

Cheers
Richard

 

Yes you will need a PCI or CNI or one of the other units that allow toolkit access.

Cheers

Rohan