I haven’t gotten a chance to blog about it yet, but I’m really excited to point out my article in Make Magazine, My House is a Robot. (hint, it’s on page 72, but listed on the cover and featured article in the table of contents).

The article is a beautifully renditioned (thanks Greg Ruffing and Nik Schulz) 4-page story of my day and life living in my automated house. It started when I gave a pecha kucha talk at EuroFOO last September in Brussels. Dale Dougherty really liked it and introduced me to Bre Pettis, and away I went.

One of the primary points I wanted to convey, but I think was lost in the “artist’s rendering” of my house, is how easy and inexpensive the entire setup is. I rent my house, and no, it’s not shaped like a huge, 4-story robot, complete with sun deck above my bedroom.

I hope to do more articles in the future detailing some of the hacks in-depth. This article was fairly high-level and just convey the idea of what is possible and how it can fit into your life in a helpful way (yeah, I know, probably breaks a simple rule of hackerdom, usefulness). I have a series of articles discussing the software side in MacTech Magazine, but haven’t gotten to present the hardware side as much.

And there is more information available in the AutomationWiki with more being added all the time (it’s a lot to document). Drop me a comment or email if you have a specific question and I’ll try to answer it quickly & put the response up in the wiki.

Another announcement. I did quite a bit of writing in the fall. My article “Automate Your Place” (part 1) was the cover article for the January 2007 issue of MacTech Magazine. Apparently there was a large display of it, and was given out at MacWorld, but as I was somewhere on the southeast coast of New Zealand, it made physically attending to see it somewhat… difficult.

The article gives an introduction to location automation, which is more than just home automation, using Apple Mac’s. This includes information on what you need to get started, options for hardware and software packages, and a walkthrough on designing a system for use in small office. Learn about the infamous X-10, and the new and upcoming integration options like Insteon and Zigbee.

Next month’s article, in the February issue of MacTech, will walkthrough installing and configuring the automation system, and setting up scripts and triggers for when people show up to the office, want to make coffee, and so on.

Automation is really intriguing. Besides just the fact that something you make in software affects the real-world (which is awesome in its own coolness – yeah, I’d go so far as to say that), it also has benefits on saving power for reduced power bills, and environmental energy conservation. Depending on your situation, automation is also useful for physically challenged people who may need assistance controlling their living environment (temperature, lights, security) and alerting others to their situation or status.

I hope you pick up the issue and enjoy the article. Look forward to additional article on more advanced automation concepts like remote control (web browser, mobile device), advanced scripting (retrieve information from web services to make decisions), and gadget integration (Nabaztag/SlimServer/Roomba).

You should check out Indigo 2.0, and the new, schnazzy, web interface.

I got to be a part of the development of the new web interface. It is leveraging Ajax to allow a user to easily, and dynamically, control their location (not just for your house) automation system through a web browser. Built on open-source technologies such as CherryPy, Python, Cheetah, Prototype, and Scriptaculous, the new interface shows you that you can do more with websites and Ajax than keep a calendar.

You setup “Control Pages”, which are generic blank sheets for you to layout devices, applicances, controls, sensors, text, etc. You can place a background image, of say, a building floorplan, picture of your stereo, schematic of your security system. You then add the buttons for turning things on and off (lamp, coffee maker, TV, sprinklers), and sensors displays (temperature, weather, iTunes song listing). Controls and information are updated dynamically on the page. You can then link to other “Control Pages” to build up areas of a building, or subsystems, and so on.

For example, you may have a control page for the lighting and appliance in your house. Click on your TV and it may open another control page that shows an image of your stereo system with buttons for turning parts on and off, or starting up iTunes over an Airport Express. You can then go back and pull up your security or watering system. See what the weather prediction is for tomorrow, and so on. When you click on a lamp, a popup dialog (javascript, not *real* popup) with a slider and On/Off buttons let you quickly set the lamp brightness.

You can now also get an RSS feed of automation devices and sensor states to feed into your favorite RSS reader and get updates on your house/office/garage/shed/treehouse.

See also Gordon Meyer’s article, Indigo gets webified.

Since remote access via the IndigoWidget was such a popular feature – and not everyone is a programmer, I have moved setting remote control via the IndigoWidget as a preference on the backside of the widget.

You can download the new version from the software page. There is also an included Readme that discusses setting up your widget over to work over the internet back to your house or office.

I hope you enjoy!

troglogdyte speak

For those interested, coding up preferences for a Dashboard widget are actually impressively straight-forward and easy.

The only two lines of code that are special are the following which get and set the preference for the widget:

    var IndigoServerIP  = widget.preferenceForKey("serverIP");
    if(IndigoServerIP  != '')
        getObj("serverIP").value = IndigoServerIP;  

    widget.setPreferenceForKey(getObj("serverIP").value, "serverIP");

Assumedly these are stored by the name of the widget (e.g. com.highearthorbit.widget.Indigo).

IndigoWidget is a Dashboard widget for controlling Indigo Home Automation software.

Home automation is great. Perhaps not necessary (ok, definitely not necessary) but I’ve always gotten a big kick out of writing software that makes things in the world turn on, move, shake, blow up, or otherwise do something real. It’s like magic to me, even when I wrote the code and understand all (most) of the physics behind it.

Now you can control your lamp sitting on your desk just by hitting F12 and then flipping the switch or sliding the slider! Well, ok, better example – turn off all the lights outside before you go to bed. Or, get that fresh pot of coffee brewing, straight from your dashboard!
The project is free of charge, and open-source (well, like most widgets – but this is actually open-source licensed). So have a go!