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Re: Why is heyu not in debian?



On Monday, 30 May 2022 11:18:34 EDT David Wright wrote:
> On Mon 30 May 2022 at 11:00:50 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote:
> > On 2022-05-30 at 10:49, gene heskett wrote:
> > > I have been useing it, or writing its functions to talk to a cm-11a
> > > interface to all the X10 modules for remoting and automating things
> > > about the house, since back in the 80's. Suffering from 2, 2T
> > > seagate
> > > failures in the last 2 months, the rebuild of a workiing system and
> > > all its backups has been slow. I *think* I still have a working
> > > CM-11a, but its recently come to my attention that there is now an
> > > arduino kit to emulate the CM-11a. That removes the lack of a
> > > computer to line power interface that for some unk reason, has not
> > > been available from X10 for about 20 years now.  We can now make
> > > our
> > > own.
> > > 
> > > So I issued a 'sudo apt install heyu", only to have apt report it
> > > couldn't find such a critter.
> > > 
> > > Why is that?
> > 
> > A bit of Googling finds https://sources.debian.org/src/heyu/ , which
> > in turn (via the version-specific sub-pages) finds
> > https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/heyu , which shows that this *was* in
> > Debian a long time ago; specifically, it was part of slink and
> > potato,
> > and the last version included was both x86-only and packaged back in
> > 2001.
> > 
> > I've looked for packages.debian.org information on it, but found
> > nothing.
> But grepping x10 does bring up something called bottlerocket. Be aware
> that googling throws up a lot of other "bottlerocket"s.
> 
> Package: bottlerocket
> 
> Description-en: Utility to control X10 Firecracker devices for home
> automation A command-line utility to interact with the Firecracker
> version of X10's home control devices (wireless home automation to
> control lights, cameras, appliances via a small transmitter that plugs
> into the standard RS-232 serial port of a computer).

I am somewhat fam with that device but it adds another iffy link between 
the computer and the power line via some sort of a slow, not quite wifi 
radio. The CM-11a is a direct connection and considerably more dependable 
in addition to having enough memory to execute your christmas lights on 
and off at dusk to full dark for a whole year at a time. Without heyu's 
attention.

>   Also included is rocket launcher, a graphical frontend to
> bottlerocket. If you want this functionality you should have wish
> (tk8.3 or tk8.4 - the Tcl/Tk interpreter) installed.
> 
> The pages on the heyu website appear to be rather ancient.

Their mailing list is somewhat fresher if you can find it.

Its a mature app, real developement was done                                                                        
capabilities limited by the makers of the powerline hardware. Several 
other hardware makers have come, and some gone in the last 3 decades, and 
heyu has learned how to handle most of them.  I just built the latest 
tarball and installed it, seems to work ok with my limited choice of 
hardware.

> There are people active, eg for the Pi:
> https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=327319
> 
> Cheers,
> David.

Thank you David.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis




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