Linux MCE - control lights in home - how?

[michaeljm]

We are building throughout the house and must be prepared for the installation of Linux MCE on a server. In most rooms we should have a client who is connected to the server and who can show the media, film ect.. I have also seen that MCE can control lighting in all rooms, but can not find any information on what is required of preparations (hardware) to control light from MCE. We will soon have electricians on visits (which are not familiar with MCE), so I need to make clear to him the whole setup. so: How is this done and what hardware do I need to to make MCE control the lights in our home?

In addition, we also have need camera set up in the hous. Here I have the same problem, I can not find information about how it connects and what needs to the preparations.

Some who can help? any have had experience with Linux MCE lightning and monitoring the house?

Thank you in advance.

[totallymaxed]

We are building throughout the house and must be prepared for the installation of Linux MCE on a server. In most rooms we should have a client who is connected to the server and who can show the media, film ect.. I have also seen that MCE can control lighting in all rooms, but can not find any information on what is required of preparations (hardware) to control light from MCE. We will soon have electricians on visits (which are not familiar with MCE), so I need to make clear to him the whole setup. so: How is this done and what hardware do I need to to make MCE control the lights in our home?

In addition, we also have need camera set up in the hous. Here I have the same problem, I can not find information about how it connects and what needs to the preparations.

Some who can help? any have had experience with Linux MCE lightning and monitoring the house?

Thank you in advance.

Hi there,

I would suggest that you look at ZWave for controlling your lighting (and eventually when you are ready PIR's. Heating and many other devices) as this uses a wireless technology and supports both plug-in and in wall light switch modules etc. We install ZWave for our customer systems and we believe its currently the best way to go for controlling lighting, heating, motion detection etc. Do a search here on the forum for ZWave and also the wiki.

If you have more questions just ask here.

All the best

Andrew

[michaeljm]

Thanks, for the reply... I would look at Zwave for lights.

What about monitoring? Can I connect any IP camera to a swith which is connected to linux MCE(core/server)? or how do you set up monitoring? What hardware do you use to monitoring?

Thanks,

[bulek]

Thanks, for the reply... I would look at Zwave for lights.

What about monitoring? Can I connect any IP camera to a swith which is connected to linux MCE(core/server)? or how do you set up monitoring? What hardware do you use to monitoring?

Thanks,

you can either use IP cameras or composite video cameras connected to video card, that converts to digital image.

Under LMCE you can use IP cameras directly (without motion detection) or can use video,USB and ip cameras under  motion-wrapper & motion surveillance app that will also detect and report when motion is detected to LMCE.

Search for those key words in wiki and forums...

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.
 

[totallymaxed]

Thanks, for the reply... I would look at Zwave for lights.

What about monitoring? Can I connect any IP camera to a swith which is connected to linux MCE(core/server)? or how do you set up monitoring? What hardware do you use to monitoring?

Thanks,

Hi again,

Yes you can attach one of the supported IP Cameras (see Wiki link below) and your Core will auto-detect it for you. Again see the Wiki pages below for the steps needed to set this up. Currently adding IP cameras is a little complex and not as well integrated as it could be. The standard single & 4-camera views that will get auto created for you when you add cameras are only for viewing live pictures from your cameras. Currently if you have motion cameras added to your system you need to then view the recordings from the Videos section of the Media Library and you must find the snapshots & videos yourself by wading through all the ones stored there.

We are currently testing the integration of the Kmotion package. We have integrated Kmotion's Web interface and this is currently displayed in a Computing menu application window with all the Firefox window objects/controls removed.

We are allowing Kmotion to setup motion and manage the thread files and the motion wrapper is just reading the config files. At present we have left the Orbiter View Camera screens as they are as they even with performance improvements they have nor UI for playing/browsing the cameras daily timeline - all they do is live viewing. It would be great to add better support for browsing triggered camera events and the video timeline but it would look to be a pretty big job to extend the Orbiter code to support this. So for now adding the Kmotion Web interface looks to be the best way forward.

We expect to have a installer for this shortly that will make it easy to add our Kmotion implementation to an existing LinuxMCE-710 install. But in the meantime see the Wiki links below for info on the standard way cameras are setup/configured;

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Monitor_surveillance_cameras

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/IP_Cameras

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Category:Cameras

All the best

Andrew

[bulek]

We are allowing Kmotion to setup motion and manage the thread files and the motion wrapper is just reading the config files. At present we have left the Orbiter View Camera screens as they are as they even with performance improvements they have nor UI for playing/browsing the cameras daily timeline - all they do is live viewing. It would be great to add better support for browsing triggered camera events and the video timeline but it would look to be a pretty big job to extend the Orbiter code to support this. So for now adding the Kmotion Web interface looks to be the best way forward.

...

All the best

Andrew

Hi,

I've used Freevo before I switched to Pluto and later LMCE. I used pretty simple trick to see motion triggered videos - you just show those movies in separate directory with display sorting in time reverse (so you see latter first) and if we add proper screenshots, that will be more than enough for a good start and rounding of video surveillance features - what do you think ?

Freevo had a nice, handy feature - in each directory there was a text file describing, how files in that directory are displayed - if nothing was changed it was by default order, but then again you could change that default behavour... Pretty simple trick that would be handy also in LMCE for other things, but primarily for browsing video surveillance...

Changing motion-wrapper is pretty trivial (AFAIK there is a command line possibility to run when video is saved in motion), I just need some help on LMCE's part :
- how to properly enter that video into LMCE as part of security alert and as video file for later use through Orbiter
- how to switch Orbiter into particular directory with those files (can it be done with video directory as parameter? )
- if possibly to display files in time reversed order ?

What do you think ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.
 

[totallymaxed]

We are allowing Kmotion to setup motion and manage the thread files and the motion wrapper is just reading the config files. At present we have left the Orbiter View Camera screens as they are as they even with performance improvements they have nor UI for playing/browsing the cameras daily timeline - all they do is live viewing. It would be great to add better support for browsing triggered camera events and the video timeline but it would look to be a pretty big job to extend the Orbiter code to support this. So for now adding the Kmotion Web interface looks to be the best way forward.

...

All the best

Andrew

Hi,

I've used Freevo before I switched to Pluto and later LMCE. I used pretty simple trick to see motion triggered videos - you just show those movies in separate directory with display sorting in time reverse (so you see latter first) and if we add proper screenshots, that will be more than enough for a good start and rounding of video surveillance features - what do you think ?

Freevo had a nice, handy feature - in each directory there was a text file describing, how files in that directory are displayed - if nothing was changed it was by default order, but then again you could change that default behavour... Pretty simple trick that would be handy also in LMCE for other things, but primarily for browsing video surveillance...

Changing motion-wrapper is pretty trivial (AFAIK there is a command line possibility to run when video is saved in motion), I just need some help on LMCE's part :
- how to properly enter that video into LMCE as part of security alert and as video file for later use through Orbiter
- how to switch Orbiter into particular directory with those files (can it be done with video directory as parameter? )
- if possibly to display files in time reversed order ?

What do you think ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.
 

Well Kmotion does a lot more than that already. It provides a timeline view per camera which shows motion events in red and non-motion sections in blue. you can drag across the timeline to scan quickly through the motion events, you can press 'Play' to just play sections in normal time mode and you can also skip forward/backward through events. Our intention is to build something similar in the Orbiter... no timescales yet for that however.

Our current implementation using Kmotion purely for viewing and analysing motion events works well and does not interfere in anyway with the standard existing LinuxMCE security modes as these still work as they do now. So you can think of Kmotion as a very much more sophisticated security camera viewer/manager.

All the best

Andrew