Do I understand LMCE properly?

[superwad]

Hello everybody.  I just heard about LMCE recently, and I just want to make sure that I'm understanding both the purpose and function of it.

First off, it is designed to *be* the house, in some respects.  It is capable of multiple inputs from such things as security cameras, motion detectors, light control, etc.  Essentially, if somebody can contrive a way for LMCE to understand input, LMCE can control it.

Secondly, LMCE is user-, house- and media-centric.  If I move around in the house, so long as a LMCE front is configured in that room, my session will follow me (is this with tracking devices, or do I need to authenticate at each front-end?).  By house-centric, I mean that LMCE is designed to know everything about your house, from lighting, to location, and everything between.  This way, LMCE can deliver the best media and control environment for the user.  And media-centric because it organizes and displays all your data in a friendly, intuative way.

So that is the purpose of LMCE, to my understanding.  The function is something I'm not entirely clear on yet.

From what I can gather, LMCE is capable of learning about a multitude of input/output devices (or rather, it will be capable of a wide variety; right now the device set is limited).  My concern is with the integration.  For instance, let's say that I want to completly wire LMCE into my house, from top to bottom.  Everything will be controlled by a very capable media distribution system.  What kind of options do I have for that?  Things I am interested in are typically found in a "Smart Home": full lighting control, music, video, news, food and drink, inventory of consumables.  If there is a sensor available to give me telemetry on those variables, could LMCE hypothetically be set up to control them, or at least facilitate control?

Another situation, similar to above, is if I decide to network only my bedrooms and living room, but then decide to add a kitchen sometime later.  How easy will this be when I'm not using the initial setup?

I obviously don't have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.  I keep some of my media on a local fileserver, but the majority of it is available on DVD.  For the media that is available on my network fileserver (music, movies, TV shows, pictures), will that be accessable throughout the LMCE network?  From what I gather, this would be possible, due to the core/frontend environment LMCE uses.

My last hypothetical concern is that of distribution.  If I were to use LMCE to run media services in an entire organization, with around 200 computers in the building, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect one LMCE server to provide or administrate content, let alone house services, to that many frontends.  Would having multiple cores, say 5, with media content available on a SAN, be an option?  I suppose another topic of distribution would be having two locations, be they in the same city or opposite ends of the Earth.  Can LMCE communicate with external cores, if it has the ability to communicate with other cores to begin with, and co-ordinate local and non-local content and management?  The core(s) in location A would obviously control the security at location A, and B would do the same, but can both locations dynamically send/recieve/share content, if the network infastructure were set up properly?

I thank you for taking the time to read through my thouroughly hypothetical questions.  I really like what LMCE can do, and it hasn't even matured yet.  It will be exciting to watch the functionality and features to grow over time!

[superwad]

I suppose I should take the lack of replies as an acknowledgement of my full and proper understanding of LMCE.  I hope that the silence doesn't mean I baffled anybody, which I highly doubt I did.

If I'm even a little bit correct on anything, could somebody let me know, so I don't keep hoping and dreaming of a reply.

Thank you.

[bulek]

Hi,

IMHO lack of response mean that it's quite hard to answer fully to your questions right now....

LMCE is pretty immature, we're all waiting for 1.1 release that would be a bit more completed and maybe offer solid base for further work.

At this time, a lot of your questions go into "I'm not sure about an answer if I don't see it functioning first"....

HTH,

regards....

[totallymaxed]

Hello everybody.  I just heard about LMCE recently, and I just want to make sure that I'm understanding both the purpose and function of it.

First off, it is designed to *be* the house, in some respects.  It is capable of multiple inputs from such things as security cameras, motion detectors, light control, etc.  Essentially, if somebody can contrive a way for LMCE to understand input, LMCE can control it.

Secondly, LMCE is user-, house- and media-centric.  If I move around in the house, so long as a LMCE front is configured in that room, my session will follow me (is this with tracking devices, or do I need to authenticate at each front-end?).  By house-centric, I mean that LMCE is designed to know everything about your house, from lighting, to location, and everything between.  This way, LMCE can deliver the best media and control environment for the user.  And media-centric because it organizes and displays all your data in a friendly, intuative way.

So that is the purpose of LMCE, to my understanding.  The function is something I'm not entirely clear on yet.

From what I can gather, LMCE is capable of learning about a multitude of input/output devices (or rather, it will be capable of a wide variety; right now the device set is limited).  My concern is with the integration.  For instance, let's say that I want to completly wire LMCE into my house, from top to bottom.  Everything will be controlled by a very capable media distribution system.  What kind of options do I have for that?  Things I am interested in are typically found in a "Smart Home": full lighting control, music, video, news, food and drink, inventory of consumables.  If there is a sensor available to give me telemetry on those variables, could LMCE hypothetically be set up to control them, or at least facilitate control?

Another situation, similar to above, is if I decide to network only my bedrooms and living room, but then decide to add a kitchen sometime later.  How easy will this be when I'm not using the initial setup?

I obviously don't have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.  I keep some of my media on a local fileserver, but the majority of it is available on DVD.  For the media that is available on my network fileserver (music, movies, TV shows, pictures), will that be accessable throughout the LMCE network?  From what I gather, this would be possible, due to the core/frontend environment LMCE uses.

My last hypothetical concern is that of distribution.  If I were to use LMCE to run media services in an entire organization, with around 200 computers in the building, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect one LMCE server to provide or administrate content, let alone house services, to that many frontends.  Would having multiple cores, say 5, with media content available on a SAN, be an option?  I suppose another topic of distribution would be having two locations, be they in the same city or opposite ends of the Earth.  Can LMCE communicate with external cores, if it has the ability to communicate with other cores to begin with, and co-ordinate local and non-local content and management?  The core(s) in location A would obviously control the security at location A, and B would do the same, but can both locations dynamically send/recieve/share content, if the network infastructure were set up properly?

I thank you for taking the time to read through my thouroughly hypothetical questions.  I really like what LMCE can do, and it hasn't even matured yet.  It will be exciting to watch the functionality and features to grow over time!

Hi,

I think the lack of response is partly for the reasons that Bulek mentioned but also because its a lot of effort to answer so many questions! ;-)
Yes your right above. LMCE can do all those things but in some cases would require effort to get there on your part at present. In terms of media this can be located essentially anywhere on your home network - on your Core, another MD (if it has an HD built in), a Windows/Linux PC, a Windows/Linux fileserver or NAS and then can be played back anywhere you have an MD. Yes it can 'follow' you from room to room (or be moved from room to room manually) and this 'follow-me' feature can be triggered changing the 'suer' on an MD in the room you've moved to to 'You' or could be triggered by LMCE 'sensing' your presence using Bluetooth, or the presence of your LMCE Gyration remote or in the future some other similar technology.

The physical network is really down to your performance needs, budget, sensitivity to the disruption in the decor of your house. Running Cat5 cabling to any location where you think you may want to have network access is a good strategy and will give you flexibility later (a general rule is if in doubt... put more cat5 in rather than less as its always more disruptive to add it later). Of course you can 'mix'n match' your network with Wifi and Powerline etc in locations where you don't want to run cat5 or you need the freedom of a wireless connection (SD TV and playing back a DVD over my Wifi network to my laptop works ok...with some drop outs and for all other purposes its completely ok).

A multi-house configuration is certainly possible but would require more configuration/setup and none of that currently is 'automatic' and would have to be carried out manually by you. Essentially you would build a VPN between all the properties.

Some people here on the forum, possibly most people, would want to so some or all of these things themselves as this is an activity they enjoy. Others here may not want to do very much of this but do want to do some work themselves.

My company (based in the UK) is aiming at delivering LMCE based systems to users who just want the capabilities offered by LMCE but are not interested in installing/configuring it themselves. Most people here in the forum are interested in installing/configuring & experimenting with LMCE themselves - we believe the two do not overlap really at all so we contribute here freely and we learn from others here too.

Anyway... hope the above is of some help to you :-)

Andrew

[superwad]

Thank you both for your replies.  I want to try testing out LMCE, but I believe I'm going to hold off until more core hardware is supported, because purchasing pre-set models of computer hardware isn't what customization is all about.  I will look forward to when I can install this on almost any decent hardware.