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.

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).

Tags: mactech, homeautomation, automation, indigo, xtension, misterhouse, x10, insteon

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.

Tags: homeautomation, automation, indigo, indigoweb, ajax, cherrypy, python, gordonmeyer, javascript, prototype, cheetah, scriptaculous

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).

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!

0xdecafbad points out the modern efforts in making the XBox Maker Friendly Wow, I had no idea all this was going on. XBMC (XBox Media Center) now supports MythTV, bundles web server, python scripting, and there is a large repository of scripts.

All this progress really makes me want to go back and start mucking with it again. Hrm – view my home automation & home intranet from my XBox. I wonder if there is iCal file format support (ala ThunderBird). Answer: Yes, yes there is.

Sounds very yummy.

I’ve also learned my collective lessons and usually wait about a week before even *considering* an upgrade to the newest version. This allows all the relatively high-level bugs to shake themselves out. Also, I’ll be waiting for an XBox mythtv frontend release. Couple this with the fact that I will be gone on travel all of next week and don’t want to leave certain *addicted people & pets* without their certain charming shows. I also have a bunch of other projects going on at the moment, and nothing terribly lacking in my current MythTV setup. The upgrade will have to wait until early March more-than-like.

The idea of using an IR remote on a device that is designed to go under things seems short-sighted and/or cheap.

The first question lies in how I want to approach this. There are a couple of primary things I want the system to handle while accomplishing some small tasks:

• Web-access – Specifically via my laptop, work, or cell-phone (non-wap)
• Easily setup & scriptable – I’m tired of fooling around with too low-level hacks and spending all my time just getting them going.
• Work from a Mac – I primarily use a Powermac G5 that I can begin testing with and then move it to a dormant Beige G3 sitting in the basement. Of course, there is still that rumor of a possibly headless Mac at MWSF
• Prefer USB
• Audrey Interface

The options are: Indigo, XTension, MisterHouse for software; and using the PowerLinc USB, PowerLinc Serial, or ActiveHome CM11A Serial computer interface modules.
Nothing appears to meet all my needs yet. I think I prefer Indigo with the PowerLinc USB, but Indigo is (1) Expensive, when compared to free, and (2) doesn’t natively provide a web-interface, but requires another ACGI dispatcher for $35.

There are trial versions of all the above packages. So I can give them a try. The first step is to get a controller box. For some reason, I’m leaning towards the PowerLinc USB, since then I don’t have to buy & deal with a USB-Serial dongle, but that seems to be of questionable support, for some reason. So I’ll probably get the CM11A and stay with compatability for the time being.