Applied Digital Ocelot Stops Reading and Learning IR

I encountered an issue where my Applied Digital (ADI) Ocelot controller stopped learning and receiving IR signals. I use my Ocelot with Omnipotence Software's Event Control System (ECS). I am also using the ADI SECU-16IR, which is an expansion module that adds 16 zones for IR output.

I contacted ADI for assistance and spoke with "Kevin", a longtime employee at ADI. The issue I encountered was occurring because I have inadvertently deleted the program from Ocelot. With ECS all control logic resides on a PC, so there is no program in the Ocelot. However, according to Kevin, one line of code consisting of "End Program" must be in the Ocelot in Order for it to learn IR. The CMAX 2.0 software that is provided with the Ocelot must be used to create and download this program.

First, open the CMAX 2.0 software:

As can be seen no program lines are shown. Click the "Insert Line" button on this page, and you will see a window shown below:

On the drop down box, select End, the close this window.

Next, on the CMAX software select attach to controller:

When you first enter the new screen, you will see a window which reads "Warning! Your Controller does not have the latest exec code..Load Now?"
Press "Cancel" on this Window.

Select the "Program File" menu, and its single entry "Download Program in Editor to Controller".

The download will being and will take between one and two minutes. After this simply "Close" the close button and the Ocelot should now be able to learn IR Commands.

Postie with Road Runner Email : Correcting "502 Command is locally disabled" error

Notes on Email Issue Using POSTIE

When using POSTIE to send an email message the following error message was observed:

Login 'myECS@woh.rr.com' failed: 502 Command is locally disabled

This error occurred running Omnipotence Software Event Control System (ECS) 4.4 and sending email with the "POSTIE" command line interface email utility. ECS has a class called the "Email-Class" that accepts parameters that are used to create in a .BAT file to execute POSTIE. When this .BAT file is executed it produces .LOG file that contains the output from POSTIE. Examining the .BAT file shows the following:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -user:myECS@woh.rr.com -pass:mypassword -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"


Note this is a test message to my cell phone and I have replaced the phone number with a dummy value. The -v:5 is a verbose setting for POSTIE, with 5 being the most verbose. My ISP "Road Runner" uses ESMTP instead of the standard SMTP. From the Wikipedia article "Extended SMTP (ESMTP), sometimes referred to as Enhanced SMTP, is a definition of protocol extensions to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol standard". One of the features of ESMTP for ISPs is that it grants email send permission to email client programs based on the location of the sender instead of a username and password. As a result I can send email via my ISP's mail server so long as I am at home, accessing the internet from my cable modem. If I am attempting to send email with my ISP's mail server when I am away from home, an error is returned. This relates to POSTIE and the "502 Command is locally disabled" error message because the "-user:" command is not needed by this mail server, because it does not support authentication. The error is corrected by removing the "-user:" and "-pass:" commands. The POSTIE command then looks like:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"

The User and Password fields in ECS should be set to "none".

Other Observations

Another error message that can easily occur with POSTIE is :

Could not send: error= -1
Status: 550 Sender address is missing a domain

This will occur if a valid domain is not associated with the "-from:" command above, as shown below:

postie -v:5 -host:pop-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"

My ISP has two addresses associated with its email server, a pop server address for checking incoming email and a smtp server address for sending email. I have found that EITHER can be specified in the "-host:" command to send mail, as shown below:

postie -v:5 -host:smtp-server.roadrunner.com -from:myHomeAutoStatus@woh.rr.com -to:5555551212@cingularme.com -s:"ECS Alert!" -msg:"This is a test message" > "myTextMessage.log" 2>&1
echo > "myTextMessage.done"