About 2 years ago I hopped on the XBox modding train, installed a chip, a huge hard-drive, burned many a DVD and finally was able to watch MythTV on my XBox. It’s the only way we watch TV anymore, shuddering whenever the MythTV fails us by either (a) filling up my harddrive with unused shows, or (b) crashing - which is usually some really odd occurence and after some googling, readily fixed. Since the XBox is our sole filter for incoming television transmission (well, beside the aforementioned missed shows, which require other means) I have been cautious to mess with it too much. Someone will make me pay if they miss their quality shows.

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.

Five months and a day after the release of 0.16 release of MythTV, the 0.17 release of MythTV is now available. Honestly though, what’s with the 0.x release? MythTV, which not without problems is really a version 1.x product. The common act of software projects keeping themselves version numbering < 1 until some *golden moment* seems silly. They're really underselling themselves. Of course, mighty powers such as Google are subject to this shortcoming themselves (as evidenced by the amount of Google-beta projects)

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.

While setting up my new Misterhouse server (which works rather well from my Mac to my Audrey so far), I found a reference to the USB RedRat3. It is an IR controller via USB (obviously). I want to use this little device to startup my Roomba every morning. The ability to schedule cleaning times and lengths in the roomba is a serious shortcoming in a robotic device. This Redrat should do the trick. However, another problem with the roomba is that you can only send it back to the base by pressing two buttons on the Roomba and not via remote.

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

I’m trying to determine how best to go about giving my house a soul (good or bad to be determined, but I know where I’m putting my money). Of course, this is a new project after getting O’Reilly’s Smart Home Hacks book for Christmas from my sister. She’s just fueling the gadget fire.

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.