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Linux-Based Home Services Server
BrK writes "Ucentric Systems seems to be developing a linux-based server targeted towards the average home. The server is reported to handle MP3, video, CallerID, Instant Messaging (delivered to the TV), and more." I'm still looking for the ultimate integrated box. Its some combination of this thing, Tivo and
the Zap Station (which looks like it will do for audio what tivo does for video). But it doesn't look like any of these guys are gonna be doing anything open source,
so it probably will be a long time before we get there.
Every time some company has done this, the audio/videophiles have panned it, and the public has stayed away.
Sony had a line of components with a proprietary modular connector a few years ago. The critics hated it, pointing out that it locked buyers into Sony, Sony and more Sony. Customers liked it initially, since it allowed the easy set-up you're talking about, but hated it as soon as they bought a new component from another company and had to connect it the old fashioned way with RCA cables, coax, and the like.
You're never going to get a single-vendor solution past the critics yelling "Proprietary!", and no component manufacturer is willing to adopt a standard pioneered (no pun intended) by a competitor. Even if a de facto standard does start to emerge, every manufacturer will try to create a functional, but incompatible, clone to lock the customer into their brand.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
But it doesn't look like any of these guys are gonna be doing anything open source, so it probably will be a long time before we get there.
It's going to be a long time before we get anywhere with these types of devices anyway. It's not a matter of open source, it's a matter of What Consumers Really Want(tm). Manufacturers are guessing what consumers want, and are going slowly. Why? Consumers don't really want an all in one device. Yet.
Before we can even think that our VCR, Radio, computer, and internet are going to interact, someone has to lay down some rules as to how they interact. Sure, they all have firewire. Hook your VCR to the stereo. How the heck does the stereo and VCR communicate? What information do they each need? How are they going to explain their needs to each other? We need a standards body that not only decides these standards, but also does studies to find out what the customer wants. I, for one, want to be able to buy brand A TV, brand B HDTV tuner, brand C digital surround sound system, and have them all talk to each other intelligibly!
Stereo: Behold, I am an audio amplifier with the ability to decode surround sound, MPEG through V4, and a variety of other streams and formats. I can send sound to three locations in this building, each location has the following parameters.
VCR: Howdy, I'm a VCR. You sure do have a funny accent. I'll throw out the words I don't know. I've been told to get movie A for immediate viewing, and movie B on a slow stream for later viewing. Stereo - here is the handle to the audio stream that will be playing momentarily for location one. I know you've been playing classic music from another source for this location, but this more recent command supercedes your last commend. TV, here is the video stream for location one. Router, please give me two connections to this video server, dedicate at least this much bandwidth to stream A (priority 1), and apply a priority of 4 to the following connection.
Stereo: Router, please cancel classical audio stream.
TV: I feel sick. What kind of crud are they using me for now? ew.
-Adam
Please moderate me down. Ever since I hit the karma cap, my self worth has gone down the tubes! I need to have it drop so it can go back up! PLEASE!
You can get get these lots of places... try pricewatch.com -- but before you purchase try to track down the make and model to see if it does indeed support Caller ID. And get a phone-line surge protector ;)
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There is no information about this company itself being a hoax on Altavista (at least the three pages of a search on "ucentric & host"), nor Metacrawler, nor Google.
I do not have a signature
I started the Linux Home Automation project (LHA project) to accomplish something very similar. Currently I have more of a collection of various software (my Linux Home Automation pages). I've just finished collecting a ton of hardware and getting info on the various software needed. I hope to have non-beta base software within the month. For most, the current stage of the project won't be usable. But for the tinker'r it will at least be interesting.
For those who don't mind getting their hands dirty with software they can try Mr. House (I'll correct my pages, sorry). It's written in Perl and is very functional.
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Linux Home Automation - Neil Cherry - ncherry@home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/ lig htsey/52 (Graphics)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
I want to develop "audio widgets" (eg. listboxes, radio buttons, maybe text entry) whose only output is the speakers and whose only input is a wireless device that has numbers 0 through 9 on it (there are some relatively cheap ones from X10, so you could buy a bunch and leave them laying all over). And of course, develop an event system to deal with incoming events from the 'net or PIM or caller ID.
Then I'd use the UI with little apps I'd develop that would allow me to control things through X10 or control the radio or MP3 or DVD or TV.
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So are there any *inexpensive* devices (which of course would work under Linux) which can overlay graphics onto a std. video signal in real-time? Through chromakeying or some other method?
You're not going to get cheap graphics overlay, but you could use a PIC-TV from CC Concepts to do text overlay for about $170.
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Develop away... won't do you any good. with MS's entry into the console market, esentialy a PROGRAMABLE console, they can offer firmware and software upgrades to enable just about any function on these things. play games, DVD, CD audio, MP3, and TIVO like functions. And they have the marketing clout behind them. With the pretense of a "gaming" console, MS is puting a box in every house that can compeete with any of these products.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
I don't think it's so much that they're poorly designed, it's more that the designers are trying to grab as much of the marketshare as they can by interoperating only with their own products.
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Add a wireless networking card, and build a pad that displays X11 streams. Audio out and a mic will make the telephone functions much more usefull. Make sure you leave all the processing on the server so that the display pad stays cheap, because I'll want to buy several.
Do this and you will have the ultimate home server system.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I've submitted this to /. more than once, but got rejected every time - instead other (inferior) solutions gets posted!?
Adomo is creating what you are looking for!
Take a look at this preview of their solution - it is pretty cool!
nothing to see here.
Download their PDF product description. Right there in bold letters, one of the benefits of to "Service Providers" is:
Increases barriers to competition
Sounds like just another lock in device is coming down the line.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"Linux"? Isn't that an operating system? What's that doing here on PoliticsDot?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
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Great, now when my wife and I watch Alli McBeal, we'll be distracted by endless
morf?
a/s/l/u?
count me out
I don't think all in one boxes are good because not everyone likes the same things... who wants a Packard Bell?
Right now I see an ad for the Panasonic Showstopper at Thinkgeek (its just a replay tv box)... and the thing that strikes me most is that its *UGLY*... A friend of mine who is in Industrial Design at the University of Cincinnati told me that Americans just love their grey/black boxes... going into Circuit City is funny, 'cause from a distance you don't know what the hell is what. They all look the same!
I think we need a nice modular creative design. Multiple companies should make units that have features that fit together with some sort of standard ethernet or firewire connects.
Add a DVD
Add a VCR
Add a TIVO
Add CallerID
Add an Email Box
Add a Linux box!
USB, FireWire, and Jini promised us modular things, and besides VCR/TV and Stereos, we don't have much modularity. I would like to see a big name come up with a whole line of designer, modular, entertainment devices. Paint 'em red white and blue or something to get us to like them! Hell I don't know.
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At least she didn't have a CueCat.
Ack, now I can't listen to music or watch TV!
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You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
The CallerID reminded me, so it's offtopic, but related.
Are there any consumer answering machines that will pick up if you hit a button instead of waiting for the pre-determined number of rings? If I see "unknown name/unknown number" on my callerID, I just want to hit a button and have the answering machine pick up instead of waiting for the 4 rings.
And no, I don't want to use a Linux solution. The user interface would wind up being a bit clunky (there's no space for a keyboard near the phone), and I don't feel like writing it from scratch.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Where are you getting the mp3s from? THE COMPUTER. :)
/., but for parents that want to help/watch their kids surf the 'net, etc it seems the box is going to blend a lot of the common wish-list items together.
The concept would be that all MP3's could be stored centrally, then played back on any PC or A/V system in the house. Almost like an in-home Napster server
I'd admit that the box may not work out for the uber-geek that tends to be drawn to
Look at the popularity of the RF units from x10.com where people want to stream MP3's from their PC to their home A/V system and/or to another room. This will accomplish the same thing without the horrible loss in sound quality with the X10.com product.
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http://www.thinkgeek.com/brain/bazaar/mart/cart.cg i?action=view&type=item&itemid=364e appears to be a shipping product. Has anyone bought it? It doesn't do all the ZapStation claims it will do, but there's something to be said for a product you can actually buy.
PS. Slashdot is mangling the url. Delete any spaces manually.
Congratulations! Linux (and unix-es in general,) has made a major transition: Product-ization, commoditization & "appliance" wrappering.
The development of simple, easy to use specialty devices for the home (a process started with routers like the product from LinkSys,) is bringing to the home simple devices, not complex systems, which fulfill specific needs in a secure and un-interruptible manner.
That all of these devices can interoperate or at least communicate, is a testament to the connectivity available, painlessly, in Linux.
What does this mean in the larger sense? That appliances will evolve as our understanding of their roles (and the limits we wish to place on those roles,) evolve.
It is antithetical to the current PC-centric evolution of centralized authoritative control of everything by distributing the intelligence required to control a device to that device itself.
That there will be more. Many many more.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I don't think there's a single geek house that doesn't have something like this. Perhaps UCentric is just marketting it to the masses.
My home setup is very similar (or is in the works to be, some things aren't implemented yet):
It's by far not the only system in existence and I'm sure that others have far better systems. Perhaps there should be some kind of unifying effort in this area? Yeah everyone has their own needs but there is a LOT of commonality and that should be put to use
Maybe you should have a look at: Jabber.org and Jabber.com. There was also a nice feature on Jabber in August's (or was it September's?) issue of Linux Journal. Jabber has the potential to integrate all of the above and more.
Right now, I'm working on a similar system to tie together the TV, DVD drive, wireless speakers throughout the apartment, X10 modules, and some RF remotes. I'm aiming for something like the automated telephone menus for interacting with the system from anywhere in the apartment. Also, it would alert me to various unsolicited events (new email, caller ID info, scheduled appointments, CNN.com breaking news, grandfather clock, UPS tracking status changes, etc...).
The separate pieces exist in open source already. But unless it's engineered well, each person's solution is likely to be a hack that's only useful to them because the pieces can be put together in so many different ways.
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Linux is the ideal platform for such a system. The problem with all efforts so far to do something like this is that they have all centered around "the home computer" (typically a Windows box). To make something like this work, you have to have something a little more "hands off." It's got to be a box that you mount on a wall in the basement, plug your services (power, telephone, DSL/cable, etc.) into, and forget about it. More likely for most homes, an installer will perform this service. Then you have everything available, a truly automated home. With that shaky PC out of the way, it can actually work.
I have friends with X-10 installations, and they all complain that the problem with tying it into your PC is that they don't want to encumber the PC with home automation tasks. I've had mine running for about two years now, though, with no problem -- I use Linux. My main server, which is also running IP masquerade for my LAN, file/print services, as well as my BBS, handles it all without so much as a hiccup.
Truly effective home automation requires a system that was designed to be "always on" -- and to me, that means more than just the ability to reduce a service down to a tray icon, it means the ability to truly jump into the background, to start automatically even when nobody is logged on, and to seldom (if ever) stop. Once that pesky PC is taken out of the picture, this stuff can really fly.
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I have a box at home that does this Stargate, but it's probably more expensive ($899) than what you're looking for. Of course, it does a helluva lot more than just answer the phone.
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The Ucentric hoax is actually quite old.
You might have confused it with something else. Ucentric is participating in various upcoming conferences based around home technologies (or so their news page states). It would seem to be an awful lot of work to perpetuate a hoax...
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www.icepick.com
www.jeffshouse.dynip.com
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
The rush to have a be-all and end-all box means that, once we have it, civilization might as well end. :-/
And I agree. Most boxes (Apple hardware to the contrary,) are hideous.
They are not designed. They are cobbled together by people who are trying to win the lowest bid.
The closest we have to a component-ized product line is stereo systems. (Most are boring boxes but some, like Bang & Olufsen, have style.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Your link to altavista doesn't give any results... Not that I don't believe you, but I could find no information on Ucentric being a hoax or a fake company. (I tried metacrawler, too.) In fact, the Polaris VC group has a (seemingly) legit press release-ey page on their site with $10M ponied up for Ucentric.
Don't get me wrong, I realize that there is a huge possibility that everything on the web is a hoax, just curious where the info came from.