Supported wall panel orbiters?

[Murdock]

Hello -

  For security and/or lighting, I was wondering if there are any LMCE supported wall panel orbiters?


Thank you,

Ryan

[pigdog]

Hi,

Do you mean something like the Webdt 366?

[Murdock]

Perhaps, but maybe even something smaller, low powered, something you could use as you walk in the door to control lighting or just disable the security system.

[pigdog]

Well, you could always use one of the Nokia phones.

[Murdock]

True, though that's a phone. I'll take a look around and see what devices are out there.

[qball4]

Thom's framebuffer orbiter could probably be compiled for ARM processors and used on pretty much any ARM embedded wifi-enabled touchscreen computer. Put a nice bezel on it and mount it in the wall.

:Matt

[Techstyle]

I have a old XDAIIi (PDA) which you can buy on ebay for about 35GBP.  Most of them are perfectly fine but have dings on the metal case from being dropped.  Head down to the Framing shop and have them build a frame around it.  It needs to be a wide enough that the power adapter is inside the frame and drill a small hole for the reset button just incase.  Then mount them wherever you need them and you are all set.

They run the Win CE orbiter

[geekyhawkes]

Really interesting idea.  I would be very interested to see the pictures of the solution you end up with.

[rperre]

There has been talk on the forum before about the mini2440 boards, which would be perfect for this, I'm looking for the same.

There is already a wiki started on these ARM boards

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Mini2440_Orbiter_setup_and_FAQ

For some general info and sales in europe and asia look at the friendlyARM.net site. In the USA they are for sale at mini-box.com

Whenever I get to buying the rest of my orbiter stuff I will get one of these and try it, than mount it in place of all my current intercom stations and the alarm panels in the house for all "fixed" orbiter needs around the house.

Richard

[wackychimp]

I'd love to see support for a POE panel (power over ethernet) as I'm just getting ready to wire our house.

Something like this:
http://www.smarthome.com/12007/INSTEON-and-ISY-99-Compatible-Power-over-Ethernet-PoE-In-Wall-Touch-Screen-EASYTOUCH-P/p.aspx

There isn't already support for poe devices is there?

[wierdbeard65]

POE is a feature provided by the network hardware, so isn't something that MCE supports or doesn't support.

Typically, you either use injectors to insert the power into the line at some point between the device and the network switch (messy) or you get a switch that provides POE directly.

Be careful though, some cheaper POE switches have a limit on the total current drain and so can't support all their ports being used for POE at the same time. Make sure if you buy one that it's up to the job ;-)

I've got a D-Link 48-port gigabit POE switch and would very much like to power devices like wall panels, WAPs etc this way - makes for much less cabling!

Now, whether there are any devices that are supported by MCE that can be powered by POE is a different matter. You can, however, often get a little adapter that plugs inline near to the device that takes the power and passes it to the device (the opposite of an injector). Even if one isn't available, you could probably make one fairly easily.

HTH

[dlewis]

PoE is the way to go... I power all of my phones via PoE...

[wackychimp]

Yeah, I love the idea of POE too. 

I guess what I'm wondering is whether or not MCE will "see" this device (or another poe panel) as an orbiter or not.  Doesn't it need some sort of storage (RAM, HDD, Compact Flash, etc.) to be able to load the orbiter software?

[wierdbeard65]

Please don't confuse POE with the rest of your question

Any network device (within reason) can by powered via POE. IEEE 802.3af defines the standard which basically utilizes unused pairs in the Cat5e cable to run power to the device. Some devices (for example IP camers, phones, WAPs) are able to extract the power from their RJ45 port directly and power themselves. If your device can't do this, you can still use POE. What you need is a bit of kit (de-injector?) which plugs inline within the network cable that passes the network pairs on to the device's network port, but extracts the power from the other pairs and provides that as a DC power feed to the device. As you have correctly spotted, there are wall panels available that can do this for themselves.

The Orbiter, however, will be the same as any MCE device, regardless of power. If it's CE-based I'm guessing Thom's magic will provide the software to it. I don't know if any of the dedicated orbiters run PXE, or if they all have the software flashed into them (like the WebDTs etc).

Even if there are no panels currently supported by MCE that are capable of native POE, don't overlook the option of extracting the power from the cable and providing it that way to an otherwise perfectly good panel.

'tis what I intend to do!

[wackychimp]

Ok a bit of Googling rendered "poe extractors" (de-injector was close  ) which I'd never heard of before so thanks for letting me know this was a possibility.  Here's one in case someone's doing searches on this forum in the future: http://www.shireeninc.com/osc/product_info.php?products_id=90

However, my panel will still need some kind of processor & storage (some kind of mini computer) in it right?  I can't just have a panel with an ethernet plug (if there even is such a thing).  The interface can't be fed directly to an orbiter (panel) from the core... correct?