07-05-2018, 12:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-06-2018, 10:01 AM by Dean Roddey.)
July 5, 2018 - CQC Version 5.3 Released
Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd. is proud to announce the release of version 5.3 of their CQC automation platform. The major new feature for 5.3 is our new from the ground up Z-Wave driver. But there has been a lot of under the hood improvements, and a lot of smaller improvements that add up to a significantly improved experience for the person configuring and customizing a CQC system.
The more significant changes in this version are:
New Z-Wave Driver. Our previous (and still available of course) Z-Wave driver was based on the Leviton VRC0P. This was never an optimal solution, since it was slow and provided a very limited palette of options to us. We have now created a new driver, based on the Aeotec Gen 5 Z-Stick, which is a fully native Z-Wave driver. In and of itself that provides us with more capabilities, but we also completely re-architected it, based on painful experience learned in previous Z-Wave drivers we have created. It is much smarter and faster and has the flexibility to handle units that the previous one could not. It is very much oriented towards auto-identifying units and doing as much setup work for you as possible, though of course our support is a bit limited for this first version. Help us get support for your units into the driver. Here are some videos to help you understand how the new driver works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-vJ4svX...jiHIm4PmWb
WebRIVA. You can now control the view-port scaling so as to better fit your templates to each mobile device. It also now supports the RIVACmd action command, which allows you to pass arbitrary, custom commands to the WebRIVA client, and handle it in your own Javascript. This is a potentially powerful extension mechanism that you could use in various ways. We also will handle some commands moving forward, with just one for this release, which is to invoke a URL on another tab.
Interface Editor. The Interface Editor now has regained the old 'widget palette', which was lost in the move to the 5.x UI. The widget palette displays a list of widgets, in their z-order, and allows you to more easily see how they will overlap and manipulate the ordering of widgets. This was built on top of a new publish/subscribe subsystem that makes it vastly more straightforward to implement such things, which is why we waited.
You now have much more control over the positioning of popups, allowing you to position them relative to the invoking widget in various ways, even if it is in an overlay. 
Static check boxes have an 'auto-toggle' option now, which makes them much more convenient to use as data entry elements to get information from the user. You don't have to add dummy toggling commands of your own to react to clicks.
Media. The Covert Art Browser widget has a new command to do a query for X number of random titles from a given category. This can be used to implement a suggestions feature.
Administrative UI. The Administrative Interface now shows when changes are present on each opened tab. This was something that was very difficult to do during the initial 5.x transition, so we had to wait from underlying architectural improvements in order to implement it. This is as small but important improvement.
More Help. We've gotten back to doing videos now, with a considerably improved setup for much better sound quality, and have been adding new ones as the release has gotten closer. This will continue, and hopefully we will get caught up to the old 4.x videos and beyond. 
Try It
You can download the new version via the home page of the web site, and try it out unencumbered for 40 days. So you can know for sure whether it meets your needs before you commit.
Existing customers covered under the maintenance system can upgrade at their convenience.
Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd. is proud to announce the release of version 5.3 of their CQC automation platform. The major new feature for 5.3 is our new from the ground up Z-Wave driver. But there has been a lot of under the hood improvements, and a lot of smaller improvements that add up to a significantly improved experience for the person configuring and customizing a CQC system.
The more significant changes in this version are:
New Z-Wave Driver. Our previous (and still available of course) Z-Wave driver was based on the Leviton VRC0P. This was never an optimal solution, since it was slow and provided a very limited palette of options to us. We have now created a new driver, based on the Aeotec Gen 5 Z-Stick, which is a fully native Z-Wave driver. In and of itself that provides us with more capabilities, but we also completely re-architected it, based on painful experience learned in previous Z-Wave drivers we have created. It is much smarter and faster and has the flexibility to handle units that the previous one could not. It is very much oriented towards auto-identifying units and doing as much setup work for you as possible, though of course our support is a bit limited for this first version. Help us get support for your units into the driver. Here are some videos to help you understand how the new driver works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-vJ4svX...jiHIm4PmWb
WebRIVA. You can now control the view-port scaling so as to better fit your templates to each mobile device. It also now supports the RIVACmd action command, which allows you to pass arbitrary, custom commands to the WebRIVA client, and handle it in your own Javascript. This is a potentially powerful extension mechanism that you could use in various ways. We also will handle some commands moving forward, with just one for this release, which is to invoke a URL on another tab.
Interface Editor. The Interface Editor now has regained the old 'widget palette', which was lost in the move to the 5.x UI. The widget palette displays a list of widgets, in their z-order, and allows you to more easily see how they will overlap and manipulate the ordering of widgets. This was built on top of a new publish/subscribe subsystem that makes it vastly more straightforward to implement such things, which is why we waited.
You now have much more control over the positioning of popups, allowing you to position them relative to the invoking widget in various ways, even if it is in an overlay. 
Static check boxes have an 'auto-toggle' option now, which makes them much more convenient to use as data entry elements to get information from the user. You don't have to add dummy toggling commands of your own to react to clicks.
Media. The Covert Art Browser widget has a new command to do a query for X number of random titles from a given category. This can be used to implement a suggestions feature.
Administrative UI. The Administrative Interface now shows when changes are present on each opened tab. This was something that was very difficult to do during the initial 5.x transition, so we had to wait from underlying architectural improvements in order to implement it. This is as small but important improvement.
More Help. We've gotten back to doing videos now, with a considerably improved setup for much better sound quality, and have been adding new ones as the release has gotten closer. This will continue, and hopefully we will get caught up to the old 4.x videos and beyond. 
Try It
You can download the new version via the home page of the web site, and try it out unencumbered for 40 days. So you can know for sure whether it meets your needs before you commit.
Existing customers covered under the maintenance system can upgrade at their convenience.
Dean Roddey
Explorans limites defectum
Explorans limites defectum