Thinking Home Community

In Thinking Home v1.x, the serial port settings were available in each document window by clicking on an icon in the lower left corner. This was way too inconspicuous. Each doc's setting is separate because you can have multiple controllers, each on separate serial ports. The Prefs is used when no document is open, like when you're creating a document or using the Remote for All Lights Off.

Over the years, Apple has put in a lot of security fixes to ensure AppleHelp is not a way for bad guys to abuse your system. Unfortunately, it is buggy when it comes to registering different Help Books. TH 1 Help is installed by running the included script. The transition to TH2 is often rough even though TH2 registers its help files properly and goes further by clearing out the help cache and prefs. Still, AppleHelp often finds the old help or none at all.

I'd recommend being careful when going back and forth because you could find yourself with TH2 running 24/7 (in the background) and TH1 competing for the same serial port. Worse, some (or all) versions of Mac OS X actually let two apps open the same serial port at the same time. Both think things are peachy and then confuse the CP-290 or other controller. This is an ongoing issue with System Preferences -> Network. You definitely want to access your controller with one just app at a time.

No idea what the "fallback" stuff is. I doubt it is from TH2.

091102 - 1015 PST


I'm using a CP290, a Keyspan dual USB Twin Serial Adapter (USA-28XG Keyspan Driver v 2.5 dtd 1/22/08 through a powered FriendlyNET USB HUB-4G on G4 w/ 10.4.11. The CP290 is disconnected from G4 for normal use.


Beating a dead horse even harder.



That only worked if the data file stored port matched that in TH 1.1.17 preference. If not, then Warning box quoted earlier arises. That is one of the things I explored/experienced.

You are quite right about the separate serial ports. From your view point so many different controllers may have to been dealt with. I have a simpleton setup that only runs one controller that is disconnected from the computer once the events are loaded. I just didn't realize that consistency in assigning a specific serial port to a specific controller to a specific schedule is vigorously enforced. The user just can't plug into any convenient USB port. At least that is the conclusion now rolling around in my head. The down side for me is I now have to revise our local instructions for family and visitors to be able to revise scheduling without me looking over their shoulder.

In my stumbling around I considered running both V1 and V2 at the same time but thought that if something went wrong I may not easily fix it. I tend to not be fatalistic. I only ran one application at a time.

Recommendation heeded! Thank you for the rapid response!

The horse is buried, however, I may have a dead cat around here somewhere.

Running 2.2 (paid the upgrade fee)

Is there a way to force TH to upload settings to the controller other than to change something on each schedule?

I moved the Hardware & Schedules.xml file to a new computer and dispute TH saying that it was uploaded to the CM-15A it wasn't executing its schedules. To resolve this I had to go to each event and change the time by 1 minute. This isn't the first time I've had to do this. In the past when a controller lost its programming due to a power failure that was long enough to drain its batteries I've also had to do this.

There's now a Store Schedule menu item where you can force TH2 to store a schedule, even if it's already been stored.