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Yet another wireless standard out in europe -seems to be an offshoot of siemens but has signed up other manufacturers among them Honeywell. Anyone actually heard about this being used?

No I'm in the UK ddamron. By the way what is PLM?

Thanks - I will keep a look out. My main interest is in obtaining some sort of heating control through linuxMCE - ( I am actually a heating engineer anyway) - danfoss have just released a Zwave compatable TRV, so I'm trying to read up on that. Am I ight in thinking basically you have an rf controller linked to your MCE Core via either USB or Rs232 which then receives/transmits data/commands to the module?

I don't have any idea how the danfoss trv would interact with linuxmce- is this a code module that would have to be written to control some sort of plug module that swtiches the boiler on an off and closes the various trv's when set temperatures have been reached. I would also like to integrate weather compensation as well.

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LinuxMCE was at the outset a fork of Pluto's debian based Linux distribution for home automation. The founder of the LinuxMCE project, Paul Webber, contacted Pluto after seeing a demo of their software at a trade conference. The Pluto folks were happy to let Paul create his own Linux distribution using their foundation so long as he renamed the project. Since then LinuxMCE has moved from debian to Ubuntu (a debian based distribution), and is now moving from being primarily run by Paul alone to being a more open project all around.

Pluto allowed also us to import all their existing Wiki pages, including their Programmer's Guide. The information is largely accurate for LinuxMCE as well and we've updated many of the parts that didn't apply to us since then.

Ah yes thanks - just found it in the wiki!

On doing a google for zcs201- I'm very interested in the danfoss z-wave compatible trv's - I came across plutohome.com, noe I'm hearing the word puto thrown around the forums here- is there anyconnection with linuxmce and this site? Just curious?

I'll keep my eye on them  - transceiver may come along and pc interface(keepps fingers x)

Anyone used these at all?

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/Reviews/HomeEasy-Wireless-Home-Automation-Review.html

Have had a quick look at z-waves site. On first glance they seem to be following the standard heating control/feedback setup of having one room stat controlling the whole system or probably more if the system is zoned with 2-way valves. However I'm looking to do something a bit more advanced. My first thoughts were stats in all rooms, using something like iButtons and a 1-wire system should be cost effective 
and zoning of every room in the house, backed up by weather compensation(again using iButtons) which can save something like 15% on systems and should be amandatory in part L of the building regs. Viessman boilers have these controls as options and outperform the rest when they are fitted. I'm also trying to avoid the badly designed user interfaces that the manufacturers produce:

http://www.z-wave.com/modules/iaCM-ProReg-II/index.php?op=showCat&id=52&segId=1&adId=171 

being very similar in appearance to siemens, danfoss etc controls that I install.

Hi thanks for your reply Andrew, I'll read through your wiki.


The problem with heating control is the zoning. I have an idea for a new install system with actuators on the outlets off a manifold (commercially available) controlling the zoning to each room rather than spliting the house into 2 or at most 3 zones using 2 way zone valves as happens in most cases at the moment. The big hardware problem I 'm looking to solve at the moment is how to add room by room zoning to an already installed heating system. Siemens do Rf controlled motorised Trvs but there are problems of both cost and interfacing with these , I'm still searching for some sort of actuator I could mount on top of standard trv bodies but so far no joy. I would be very interested in how you intend controlling the heating system, I hadn't heard of zwave before I found this site.

Oh btw , has anyone here tried using old xboxs as media directors/thin clients(yes I know they're not very thin.lol)

First of all an apology if what I'm looking for is somewhere obvious ! I only found out about this project 2 days ago and have been watching videos and reading your site since. I have been thinking about implementing a home automation system in my house for some time with the possibility of then adding this service to my existing business.

I have 2 questions :

1) Is there a list of features anywhere that will tell me what support for various technologies is already present in LinuxMCE. The area I am interested in is heating control and I was previously thinking about using and adapting the opensource project Mister House along with one wire networks and some form of actuator to provide automatic and programmable temperature and zoning control as well as some form of weather compensation to the heating system in my house.

I am actually a Corgi Enigineer(a qualification that allows you to work on gas appliances in the UK)and fit heating systems as part of my job, in fact I am self employed.

I think I have read somewhere that someone has used 1-wire Nets with LinuxMCE is there any documentation on this?
Are there any people here from the UK who have used LinuxMCE to control their heating?


2) This is an open source project , is my understanding correct that I could still use this in a commercial project as long any changes made to the code are maade under the same licence? I am a bit vague on the lincensing issues involved here and would appreciate some pointers on material relevant to it that I could read. My idea at the moment is to offer my service and sell the hardware to customers to provide them with an easier gui than they get presently with the numerous programmers and thermostats that I install and are obviously not designed to be customer friendly. Sometimes if the devices include RF stats the cost con be £150 or more. I am sure there is a market for me to offer a LinuxMCE device as an alternative with some of my customers.

If I'm out of order and have the wrong idea about this please let me know. I think this is a fantastic project and would like to offer my help if I can help at all? I'm sure my IT skills are not a patch on those of anyone already working on this project but here's a list of some of my skills anyway.

Maths and Physics Degrees
8 years teaching at Secondary level.
Did some c programming many many years ago but nothing really for the last 10 years
Have a pretty good knowledge of networking, have MCE status for all thats worth .
Have started to use linux myself for the last 2 years - though not to anything approaching guru depth
I have a pretty good knowledge of heating systems and their control- in the UK anyway!