Whole House Automation & Control

[Carl_Huff]

I am a seasoned C/C++ programmer & hardware engineer that is interested in whole house automation & Control.  I am also an avid audiophile.  Anyone interested in exploring UPnP (Universal Pug and Play) automation devices and adding 'high quality' audio streaming to LinuxMCE?  I am in idea collect and explore mode.  Any thoughts or suggestions?

[choder]

LinuxMCE uses MythTV for it's backend TV recording.  MythTV .20 supports UPnP.  I haven't had a chance to try it with LinuxMCE but I can attest to it (MythTV .20) working very well without LinuxMCE.  As a UPnP server for video, pics, and music it's great for any UPnP client.

The limitation in the media it serves is in your client, files are served in whatever format they're stored, so if the client can't read a *.nuv file, (TV Recording) then you won't be able to view it without some creative conversions to a more compatible file format.  There's a few scripts available in the MythTV wiki to accomplish this, but "out of the box" it's not there.

If LinuxMCE doesn't already support the UPnP offered by the portions MythTV it uses, I don't think it would be a hard adoption of features.  This would be your best bet.

[Carl_Huff]

Hmmm ...

Clearly I need to spend some time studying MythTV!  When I spoke of UPnP I was thinking of sophisticated scene and environment management and devices that 'self describe' and advertise their capabilities.  Like I said, I am still very much in explore mode.  Thank you for the info.  More of the same would be very welcome!

[thynk]

I'd be more interested seeing a good integration with MisterHouse, the project that I currently use to control my house, it does a very good job of controlling my house and talks to just about every automation device you could ever want with a great team of developers for anything new that comes along.

I know there is some work being done on the MH side, as it was the MH mailing list that lead me here :-)

Stu

[tfagern]

Hello

I love the idea to get full integration with home automation and inteligent home systems, i would like to see systems like Moeller XComfort beeing suported in LMCE.
This is a RF based wireless home management system that controls lightning heating, sunscreening, curtains, security and much more.
I think its based om the FunkBus protocol, but im not quite sure.

Her is a link to one of their german sites: http://www.moeller.net/de/xcomfort/xcomfort_radiofreq/xcomfort_radiofreq_compo/index.jsp


Regards

Terje in Norway

[Carl_Huff]

The Moeller stuff appears to not have found it's way into the United States as I've never come come across their product.   And that's unfortunate because looking ar their website, their product looks to be commercial grade and very robust. 

MisterHouse looks interesting.  The only downside is that it is written in Pearl and I'm a C/C++ bigot  <Grin>.  However I will look into it. 

Please keep the suggestions coming!

[Wardy]

I'd be more interested seeing a good integration with MisterHouse, the project that I currently use to control my house, it does a very good job of controlling my house and talks to just about every automation device you could ever want with a great team of developers for anything new that comes along.

I agree, I think carl would be attempting to "re-invent the wheel" if he started a new home automation project.  I however his skills could make the existing "wheel" fit in an integrated way then that's something very exciting.

I've done some homeseer scripting in the past that popped up message overlays on our TV (via Tivo) if the kids put their lights on after bedtime etc. but am very new to Linux.

Mark.

[Elluminatus]

I think for Europe the stuff from ELV is very very interessting. See my other post here http://forum.linuxmce.com/index.php?topic=1326.0

Greetings Elluminatus