Certainly very interesting and something that I have thought about myself.

Have you worked with voice recognition technologies before? From what I have read a lot of complexities come from picking up voice reliably and what microphones to use. This could be overcome somewhat by incorprating the telephony system, so that you dialed a certain extension to issue a command. Not as simple to use, but probably more reliable plus the bonus that you could conceivably control it from anywhere you can find a phone.

I think activating a scenario (assuming that you have the recognition part working) should be quite straightforware. You are essentially doing a messageSend. This could be done by creating a "voiceOrbiter" device or something.

Controlling the menus might be better approached by simulating a user interface device. The Orbiter can be controlled by keyboard, mouse, infrared remote etc. so I imagine this should be quite doable. Potentially you could even write a LIRC driver that works on voice???

Configuration should be a ble to be added to the standard configuration screens I guess.

Let us know how you get on. You might want to take a look at MisterHouse as I believe that has voice control already.

Regards
Darren

Any suggestions on programs or anything that i could use to get access to my backend would be great. I am just really confused on what to do next.

.dok

I would suggest that if you are not going to have any Media Directors then you do not really want to use linuxMCE. It sounds like you are just after a MythTV backend, and then the xbox would be your frontend machine. I would investigate some of the MythTV focussed distributions or just install MythTV in Ubuntu. LinuxMCE forms a wrapper around lots of standard applications, including MythTV, and will tend to make it harder if all you want is MythTV.

Regards
Darren

Hi,

I have been using Pluto for a while now and I am also a software developer with quite a bit of experience.
Having looked at the Pluto code in detail I can understand why it is so buggy. The developers have been squeezed to get things out and have compromised the initial design in quite a few ways. There are even comments throughout the code indicating such hacks.

I think the basic design of having everything as a device managed in a single heirarchy that extends over all machines in the household is great. The messaging mechanism of commands and events and a lightweight protocol is also sound.
I would like to see a major cleanup but with the amount of code written already I doubt that the Pluto guys will get to this and am keen to see what this fork can deliver. It certainly has generated a lot of interest.

I am keen to see how this project develops. I hope to be able to contribute as well.

Regards
Darren

Highlander,

Have you got it working with linuxMCE or just under linux?

It would be great if you could put a howTo together.

Regards
Darren