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Home Automation Recommendations for Linux?
Richard asks: "I am interested in starting some home automation projects. The only requirement is that it needs to be controllable via my Linux based system. A Google search for ' "home automation" linux ' returns more than 35,000 hits, including some good ones like this one, which just show how MUCH is out there. Are there any recommendations for a good controller with a serial or USB connection to the computer? What about power switches and sensors? Do I want a system that sends control signals over my house's power lines or RF? Any good software recommendations? As a first project I thought a simple controllable power switch would be fun: Then I could ssh to my home system, use the power switch to turn on a computer controlled radio (Ten-Tec RX-320) and use Speak Freely to send back the audio to my remote location. (This works now except that I don't want to leave the radio on all the time)."
...on what you want to automate?
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
http://www.linuxguru.be/
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
This is a good description of the MS automated home
http://www.misterhouse.net/
Seems to be a relevant, useful & worth project
Words to men, as air to birds.
What irks me about Linux home automation is the absence of a good speech synthesiser. I mean, I can automate everything, stick sensors everywhere, make control agents, a microcontroller network, but the endearing thing about it was that my computer /talked/ to me.
Festival doesn't quite cut it, not because sound quality is bad (it is quite good) but because making new, custom voices for it is a laborous, time consuming process and no good female voices are available. And doing lip synch with it is something I don't have a fscking idea about how to do. On my old Amiga 500 that was just a matter of drawing some sprites and a hundred of lines of AMOS Basic, no more.
I switched to Linux for my home server from OS/2 specifically because I wanted to replace my dying Amiga 500 that was the voice agent for my home automation, and figured that I'd have better chance to find good free speech synthesis for a more modern, free OS. That was, like, almost two years ago.
Amiga finally died but I /still/ can't pull anything like this off. What I could assemble from public sources is painfully crude even when compared to the ancient Amiga SoftVoice/Nowspeak.
Don't even remind me about rsynth...
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
The X10 stuff is fairly cheap and easy to find. Dunno about the rest.
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You can apparently do a whole automation/security system for under $3000... alerting you when someone enters the property, turning on lights, TV, whatever; schedule A/C,
Nothing to see here; Move along.
This was a fairly vague question. I moonlight as a home automation consultant. Most people, when they think of "home automation" they are really thinking about "home theater" or whole-house audio and video. There's a lot more to it, from structured wiring to control of lights, appliances, HVAC, and other items via relays, IR, etc. There could be many ways of doing what you want, depending on issues such as desired price, reliability, and how you plan to expand your system in the future.
/dev device. You can also read status this way. Any shell script or language can therefore control your X10 stuff. The only downside is that it currently requires recompiling your kernel sources, except for a couple of specific RedHat kernels for which RPMs have been built. Man, would it be great if this project made it into the kernel source tree...
I'm going to assume you want a simple starter solution that allows you to control an appliance (your radio), and uses a Linux box as a controller. You need at minimum two devices: A PC-to-powerline interface, and an appliance module.
For the powerline interface, pick up a CM11A which interfaces with a serial port. This is one of the few X10-the-brand devices I recommend*. Other companies make far superior X10-the-protocol equipment.
For the appliance module, pick up an ApplianceLinc. You can get one with two-way communication so that you can also request a status response (on/off) if you need to know that. Believe it or not, most of the time you don't need two-way X-10, and it's better from a signal-strength standpoint to minimize the number of transmitters on a circuit.
The simplest Linux software is heyu. This is extremely easy: just ssh into your machine and type 'heyu turn radio on', where radio has been set up in heyu as an alias for X10 code A1, or whatever X10 code you configured the appliance module to be.
The reason I said "at minimum" above is that this may work, but for a truly reliable X10 infrastructure you may need additional hardware, particularly if you decide to expand your system. In this case you'd need to get a coupler (to bridge the two 110V phases in your house) or better yet an amplified coupler/repeater such as the ACT CR230 I recommend, available at Home AutomationNet. There are others on that page as well. If you're not electrically inclined, there is a plug-in coupler.
With the above, you're almost there. Some electrical equipment attenuates X10 signals. Some computer power supplies, laser printers, and some TVs can affect signal strength. To isolate them, you may need to use some plug-in filters such as the FilterLinc or the ACT filters on the bottom of this page. If you want to get serious about obtaining a rock-solid X10 infrastructure then you can use an ESM1 signal meter. Also a new plug-in amplifier has been getting good reviews by early adopters.
* An alternative to the CM11A interface is the PowerLinc USB. Currently, the only linux support for this is in the wish project. This project seems VERY cool. Set an X10 address by just writing to a
Hope this helps
-bp
bp