Slashdot Mirror
Interoperable Remote Controls
Lord Prox writes "From the HAVi website:
"Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium? A TV with voice recognition capability? Or connected to a video telephone link so that the TV is muted and calls are answered automatically by a voice command? How about a video camera that automatically displays a picture on the TV screen when a visitor arrives; or starts a recording if the same thing happens unexpectedly during the night?"
Apparently 8 of the leading consumer electronics companies are trying to get rid of all those remotes and do some cooperation over IEEE 1394. Whitepapers and FAQ available."
Since it seems to be slashdotted (about pages say "Temporarily Unavailable"), there's an in-depth article over at ExtremeTech.
The interchangeable remotes is nice, but what looks like a real killer app is that we'll have far fewer wires. Just plug everything into a hub, and it's connected to all other devices.
Maybe we'll even be able to get rid of a few of those power cables if we can have some low power devices that can be powered through the connector.
Yes but becasue of the FCC googup over specturms allocated for DTV(ie iTV) we wil not see thi until 2010..2005 is suppose to be the year that sale channels finally show up fro devlopers of apps for itv so that one can mak emoney devloping itv apps..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Um... X-10 anyone? It isn't just for spy cameras you know. 8)= A couple of quick references to get you started: http://www/smarthome.com http://www.x10.com
Spend the money on a Philips Pronto. It really does replace them all, and my home theater is fairly complex. The programming software sucks, but it pretty much does it all.
Firewire is an IEEE standard. It should therefore be quite easy to licence it at a reasonable cost.I think it's actually something like $1 per port anyway.
I'll push this technology again: It lets you program your remote. It's a sort of universal remote control protocol. You can reprogram any button to almost anything. Combined with a IR reciever for your X10 light controller and you can turn lights or anything off/on from the couch.
Best spot for info on it is this Yahoo Jp1 Group
Bottom line; You gotta build your own cable, and the tools to manage the key codes ain't that great. Better yet, write your own, but if you're reading this chances are you can get by. You only end up using the software when you get a new device, which ain't TOO often.
I've got a radio shack 15-1995, and I can control everything from the back yard. I don't know why I would want to do that, but it's nice to get the telescope setup and then turn ALL the lites in the house off with one button.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
What is the world coming to? First, the invention of the remote control, the first sign that we humans may be a little too lazy for our own good.(don't get me wrong, I would die without my remote control). Now, voice activated televisions? This means one of two things, either the end is near and we can expect a fate much like the one you'll see while watchint T3, or we'll all die because we will all be to fat to move off of the couch.
Lets just hope that the voice activation is a little better than a cel phone I once had. I would end up dialing everyone else besides the person I was trying to dial.
HaHaHaHaHa
Surely you geeks must have a kick ass universal remote (I have the Sony AV3000) which you can use? I've got about a billion cables running around my living room (PC, XBox, Computer, router, laptop, Freeview digital TV, Amp, playstation, etc...) any more cables would cause the floor to give way. At least with a decent remote with programmable buttons and macros I've managed to get rid of my 5+ individual remotes.
Licensing Information...
Intellectual Property Rights licenses are available from the companies that contributed to the HAVi 1.0 specification.
The seven of the eight promoter companies (Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita including JVC as Matsushita's group member, Philips, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba) who have co-created the HAVi Specification enable smooth and easy access to their IPR, which protects the HAVi Specification, by an open Joint-License program via Philips, as Licensor, on non-discriminatory most favourable terms and conditions.
The relevant IPR includes:
1. the HAVi Specification;
2. Essential Patents, which are deemed to be necessary for the manufacture of HAVi Products, that comply with the HAVi Specification;
3. the HAVi logo, the use of which is allowed for the promotion and sales of HAVi Products and
4. HAVi Compliance Test Suite and HAVi Test Requirements, which are prescriptions for testing certain aspects of implementation of the HAVi Specification in products.
A really "nice and patented" standard :(
No, Firewire is pretty much the only option, unless you want your TV and VCR communicating over Serial SCSI or Fibre Channel (the two serial SCSI interfaces other than Firewire).
Yikes! First, you'd need a very smart device to be able to form ethernet and TCP/IP packets, deal with error checking, addressing, and everything else ethernet and TCP/IP (or UDP/IP) have to do. So, Firewire has a tiny fraction of the overhead, while not requiring you to wory about addressing and more.
Firewire devices usually have pass-through, so you can daisy-chain them... Never see that with ethernet.
Can you imagine how much computing power it would require to send raw video and audio data over ethernet? Sure, it would be possible with a computer, but your VCR and DVD player doesn't have a 3GHz processor, nor would you want it to require one...
It's more than 30 feet, and you can use numerous repeaters if you need to... Not really a problem.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have work in the home automation business, here are some features we have been able to offers for some years now.
1. Door camera's, when someone rings the door bell and the TV is on, you see the person on the picture in a picture display on your TV. Also can talk with them by picking up and phone with the in home intercom system.
2. TV remotes with script files, press power and the TV, DVD, Receiver turn ON. Press play on your remote and the lights in the room dim, blinds close.
3. Forget to turn down your heat/air or turn on the alarm, not problem dial on from you cell phone and set any of them. or in bed and don't want to get up to change the temp or turn on the alarm, just pick up your phone and set it form the comfort of your bed.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
What job does your wife do?
Fortunatelly for me, my wife is an IT professional and can appreciate both the advantages of this setup (our CDs are instantly available throughout the house, we can remotely retrieve caller-id information on last calls, setup customized alarm response scenarios, and so on) and the inevitable bugs (the first friends to ring our doorbell were were greeted by an answering machine message).
However, getting the behavior of the system just right took us more than a year, I am still being very conservative when I tweak something (I am never introducing changes to it before leaving for a vacation), and there were times where we discussed the system's interface over a graphical depiction of state machine diagram. I am sure the /. crowd thinks this is the way to go, but I also think there will be people who might find such a setup a bit bewildering.
Diomidis Spinellis - Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
#include "/dev/tty"
Ethernet? No. FireWire is designed for hubless, daisy-chainable, high speed, peer-to-peer device communications and control from the ground up. And you are incorrect about the distance limitations. Feel like you need TCP/IP specifically? No problem.
Additionally, FireWire is already widely used on almost all digital video cameras, decks, and equipment, is emerging on DVD-A devices, and is the standard interconnect for OpenCable set-top boxes specified by CableLabs.
This was what FireWire was made for. Unfortunately, its adoption and use has been crippled by an entertainment industry deathly afraid of the prospect of 100% digital transport, copies, recording, and manipulation by the end customer. What a shame.
IEEE-1394b, the current iteration of the standard, supports speeds from 100 to 3200 Mbps at distances up to 100 m, and supports its "native" 9-conductor shielded twisted-pair copper, ordinary CAT-5, and various flavors of optical cabling.
See the informative IEEE-1394b Technical Brief and What is 1394? for more information.
For even more information, including information about Wireless FireWire, see Intel's 1394 Technology site.
...the cost is now $0.25 per device.
I want the ABILITY to switch to a channel to see the front door cam when I hear the doorbell (Or better yet a text crawl across the bottom of the screen. like my caller ID box does.
The "automatic" stuff does nothing but piss off users.. Being a Home automation hobbiest and on the side installer/integrator (Yes I have designed and installed home automation systems for other people)
I know what people hate... and they absolutely hate things that assume what they want.
Besides, all of this is possible right now (except the text crawl I mentioned) as I have installed 3 such systems already into home automation/theatre systems....
doorbell rings or motion detector senses motion near the front door. activate alerter (light flash, nice doortone while fading down the background music/tv sound/stereo/whatever, select my front door cable tv channel, pick up phone and dial 44 for the front door and talk with them... press # to buzz the door open.
some of you say "get up and look" but this is not really feasable for the 6500sq foot 3 story home that 99.997% of these systems are in.
my 1150sq foot flat? it's silly. but I still saw the kids trying to spraypaint my car last night so I could hit the all lights on button and unlock the doggie door to watch my german shepard tear the arse out of one of the punks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Simply plug the D-VHS deck into a Mits NetCommander enabled set and your D-VHS controls and features are automatically added to the onscreen menus of the HD set AND to the TV remote.
Many other devices that currently use proprietary IEEE1394 control interfaces are getting ready to switch to HAVi, particularly since the cable industry finally opted for Firewire connections for recording devices.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
The 4.5 metre limit was for 1394a. 1394b allows up to 100meters using different physical media (POF ?) and also allows repeaters. Go check 1394ta.org again.
So there has been a standard for almost four years, but how many HAVi enabled electronics devices do you see down at your local Generic Big Box Electronics Store? Zero would be a reasonable estimate.
Nope, not zero. Most of Mitsubishi's big-screen TVs have HAVi. I think their HDTV VCR is HAVi also. You can wire them together with firewire and then your TV's remote can control the VCR (as well as send and receive video) over firewire. The Mitsu TVs actually want to know all about your A/V system, including which boxes are wired to which audio and video ports on which other boxes. Then, everything (supposedly) works right if you want to have your HDTV sat receiver feed video straight to the TV, but feed audio into your (non-HDTV-capable) receiver. As long as you use the TV's remote and on-screen display, switching to the satellite receiver will automatically flip the receiver to the right input and then display the video direct from the satellite.
It's actually a bit cooler then that -- I ordered one of the HAVi books used from someone on Amazon (only $5), and it's kind of an interesting spec. It really wants to stream MPEGs over Firewire, and have devices hand around Java applets for UIs. So, your HAVi TV and HAVi satellite receiver could (in an ideal world) work by having the satellite receiver send the TV an applet that contains all of the satellite guide functions, and then the TV runs the applet on-screen for you. When you tell the applet to change the channel, it sends a HAVi control message to the satellite box, telling the box to change channels and start sending a new MPEG channel.
Just reducing the number of remotes is a very small piece of HAVi.
Why not just use RM-X? This guy will have it working with all the devices in your house before these slow ass corporate companies will. Right now it's mainly focused on Winamp, but he's going to have it work with everything. I hear he's working on implementations of it in controlling a in-house automatic irrigation system, as well as a security system. He's also going to open source it. The way I see it, how can you do any better? This corporate attempt will just take years and still have an expensive system full of bugs that will never get fixed.
Crestron and AMX are only a few (but the best known) of the many companies that have these solutions already.
They aren't cheap but they are tres cool.
As an aside, they all use wires as wireless tend to be for cheap products that are installed by the homeowner after the fact. Real home automation systems are very complex and are usually installed at build or renovation time by professionals.
Check out Enlightened for more links and info.