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Thread: Home Automation Software

  1. #1
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    Home Automation Software

    Ok this is gonna be a bit of a miss match, so I've put it in the Software forum as my question starts off with.....

    Does anyone here have any experince with Harmony Home Automation Server (Pro)? Is it any good, is there anything better out there?

    What am I trying to do?

    Next year I start on building myself a house, which I would like to have some automation. Now from my searching I have found that X10 is the easiest way to make this work.

    The plan is to have all lights, curtains and some plugs be controllable from PC, either locally or remotely. (May be even the central heating!). Also I will have amps and xbox's running XBMC for different rooms, which again can be controlled via a web interface.

    In terms of local control I have two optionsm,

    1) Build a booth style touch panel rig, running a simple Linux distro to run a browser. I have two Mini itx based p3-866's which should be more then enough. One for upstairs and one for downstairs.

    Pros,
    Will look srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy,
    Large Screens,
    I have some of the parts already,
    Fun to build it all,
    Oh did i mention looks srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy, .

    Cons
    Cost, (ok with the house build its actually not that much more to spend).
    Redundancy, if some thing breaks its gonna be a PITA to fix.

    2) Use a PDA with wireless

    Pros,
    Simple
    Redundant (if it dies I can just buy a new PDA)
    Portability, (I'd only need the one and i could take that round the house as i need it)
    Adding some good IR Software, I can use it to control pretty much all my devices in the house
    One off cost

    Cons
    Small screen size
    Wont be as srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy or fun to setup...


    Any thoughts/ comments would be appreciated.

    Nims
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  2. #2
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    I don't have any experience with home automation, althoug me and a freind have discussed custom building some hardware and software to do all this including security and various types of monitoring. Never going to get it done though

    You said you are going for XBMC boxes on the TVs. Have a look at MediaPortal as a backend for TV recording and distribution (among other things). They are going through a large update at the moment which introduces a client/server model along with new visualisations and skin animations. The lead programmer used to be involved with XBMC so i would expect it to become a pretty good frontend for MediaPortal in the future.

  3. #3
    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    PDAs are quite good, as enless you've not got the touch screens already, your going to have to buy something that will cost as much as the PDA.

    If the PDA has wifi and runs windows ce 5 or later, then programming any front end is utter childsplay. Not to mention CE boots a hell of a lot faster than any windowing system i've ever seen under linux.

    Media is a difficult one, i'd try and abstract it as much as possible, not tie yourself down to any standard of media rendering device.
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

  4. #4
    Senior Member Workaholic's Avatar
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    Working for Maplins, I've just been reading up on the X10 products that we're going to be selling soon and the supplied software is only compatible with windows with a MEDIA Center plug in...

    And it looks terribly easy to set up with a maximum of 256 different plugs/automated equipment.
    Woohoo now Assistant Manager!


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