i can't wait until the tablets/umpc's come down in price and I can put em on walls near doorways, on coffee table etc... ;-)

-Thom

Basically, what I want is an OPEN, RELIABLE standard for implementing home automation signaling.. and something tells me that Echelon is wayy too proprietary. Is this too much to ask?

-Thom

yup very intriguing.. so i guess... if we can't get zwave to play nice, it's either Insteon, or Zigbee...because we damned sure don't have EIB over here in the states, which _REALLY SUCKS_ .....

So basically, we can't implement two-way communication AT ALL on any of these systems because of the patent?

I wanna fucking scream.

-Thom

of course, now this basically just makes me want to work with a handful of engineers to come up with a wifi enabled home automation buss. who's with me?

-Thom

my z-wave controller ALSO has the concept of groups, and when i toggle groups on the master controller, they go on and off smoothly.... we need to find a way to get this into pluto intelligently...

-Thom

PeteK, are you going to implement bi-directional communication? This is one of the many things that irritates me slightly about the current ZWave implementation...that, and there is no intelligent queuing of commands...basically, if I tell a room's lights to all change (i.e. from a scenario, or from my gyromote... it should tell the computer interface to group those commands together to do them all at once instead of sending each individual command one at a time... the whole ripple effect is VERY noticeable....)

-Thom

diamondcobra: try it.. download the orbiter from the web admin and install it directly onto the tablet.

-Thom

Amplifier? Yamaha RX-V1000/V1500.... there are a few others which are plug and play.

TV? Sharp Acquos LC-Dxx6U/7U TV's are directly supported... as are Panasonic plasmas with RS-232.

-Thom

Z-Wave is currently the easiest to set up. It requires a specific interface (an ACT HomePro ZCU000 or ZCS000), and is found by the system once plugged in.

EIB support I believe is forthcoming... can someone back me up on this? perhaps you can check the wiki.

-Thom

Yeah, I'm using a Nokia 770 at present, and while it does work, the bugs are a bit maddening.. I do understand that the N800 works better..and I might sell my 770 later and get an N800 or an N810.

I was looking for something larger, tablet sized, and a couple of years old, so that I could experiment with larger form factor devices as orbiters.. I see those tablets on Plutohome's site...but what the hell are they?

-Thom

Where are some good tablets roughly the size of the ones I keep seeing in the Pluto and LinuxMCE demonstrations, that I can use? I'm sure even those models are a few years old now and are cheaply available? doesn't matter....

I'm also looking at the Asus R2H and a few other UMPC devices as well as orbiters....

-Thom

it uses mythtv, so...as long as the libs are there...then....yes.

-Thom

that's what it's made for.. as a media director, with a Fiire Engine system as the core.

-Thom

That is precisely what I am wanting to do, and I'm gonna keep digging through until it makes sense, which is ironic, esp considering that the code is very good... it's flexible as hell... it's just...not...documented worth a fuck... code forensics takes time. :-P

but really, I do think making a player for each type of game you wish to play, with a plugin to manage passing to the appropriate player (using the External Media Identifiers like everything else), will produce something REALLY neat and scalable.. hell, you can even put it on the floorplan! :-)

-Thom

I am very excited as well. I'm trying hard to get my head around this code-base so that I can build a games plugin (at first mame, but there will be others.)

-Thom