App Ideas: XBMCRemote
Its been a while, too long in fact. I had a good little run of keeping this place up to date but I guess unfortunately you can’t always plan ahead and things get in the way. I was a little bored the other day and hadn’t opened Visual Studio for a while so I decided to make an App for my phone. I’ve been pondering with App ideas and none of them seem to stick or even seem a good idea. I did however notice every so often that I was using my iPad with the iPhone XBMC remote to control my HTPC every time I couldn’t find my harmony one remote or I forgot to charge it. It occurred to me there isn’t just a simple XBMC remote app on Window Phone, just a remote no fancy app that pulled down info just a remote that is quick to open and control XBMC… So I made on last night in a few hours and just made a few changes to it now. I thought brilliant I could get this on the App Store or something anyway browsing the XBMC developer forums it would seem someone had a similar idea / similar looking app so it may be back to the drawing table for my next big idea. 
HASystem 1.0 – What can it do?
Its been a while since I last wrote about the home automation system I’m working on with Andrew, in fact its been about 3 months. In that time we have both finished University and started jobs but work on HASystem has continued be it a little rocky at times but that has not stopped us from creating version 1.0 of HASystem. Its taken a completely different shape to that of what we spoke about with in the article on automatedhome.co.uk and in 1.0 a lot of things have been redesigned which has resulted in the server now being a GUI application this has changed the working model of the system, previously this was a Server-Client with sub-clients model now the system is more of a Server-Subclients model due to the administration of the system from the client moved to directly on the server, this has allowed Andy to incorporate Plugin functionality which allows us to easily extend the system further. so here is a quick break down of main changes and additions;
HAServer
- GUI Application rather than a console / service application
- Supports plugins
- Supports JSON-RPC
- Schedule Tasks
- Event triggered Tasks
Feel free to join our Google Group.
Google Group : https://groups.google.com/group/hasystem?hl=en-GB
Summer Break – Benicassim (FIB)
So I’ve just got back from my summer holiday, I took a trip with some friends to Spain to spend most of my time at FIB festival in Benicassim after graduating from Staffordshire University. It was immense hands down the best festival I’ve been to although I’m no major festival goer. So chilled out with so much sun! It was over 4 days but we stayed for 7 days chilling and relaxing all cool in the sun with a day trip to Valencia.
FIB
Having never been to a festival in another country we got an apartment which in hindsight was the best idea considering the heat. Having camped before at other events, I’ve been there and done that and nothing beats AC and a shower, plus it was a holiday, you can’t spend a holiday in a tent. The downside to this was it far from close to the festival so it was a bus or taxi to get there. Not a problem once your in a taxi or a bus. The shuttle bus was damn expensive and taxis, well they are like gold dust that didn’t seem to understand supply and demand. Other than that the sleeping arrangements where top notch and overall didn’t cost that much once you include the travel, it all boils down to how amazing air conditioning is and a nice cold shower after a sweaty day in the sun.
The highlight act however is a hard one, the surprise act had to be Professor Green. He put on a good show which wasn’t expected. The best act for me was Fake Blood as I has an awesome time during the set but best show goes to Arcade Fire on the last night, awesome.
Once last high point because I’m really not trying to review the thing but the lack of queues for getting drinks, although expensive you could get one within 5 minutes, the downside however is being pestered by people selling pills every 5 minutes.
Would I do it again? Hell yes!
But now I’m back with 3 days left until Monday morning and I’ve stumbled across this blog of mine after checking my emails and various other sites, which includes 79 inbox emails (1/3 form HASystem which has worked flawlessly) and billions of posts on Google Reader. I guess its down hill from here now until the winter so its about moving on from University, its looking like a more to Nottingham is on the cards and a new start in a new city so there is still loads left to get out of the remaining summer weeks!
Legitimately Stealing Internetz
I moved in to a new house about a month ago which goes to show how little I’ve posted here. After leaving Stafford I moved back home to Newark in a nice house. It didn’t have internet as you’d expect when moving in to a new house. As a networking student I was pondering what to do about this, I saw a couple of options here which were; One: get Virgin Media installed, Two: Get BeThere installed. That’s really the only options for anyone looking to get broadband in the UK; Cable or ADSL. I was hoping I could get ADSL that way I could get a nice block of IPv4 and/or IPv6 and host various services after cancelling my co-lo server. However, being Newark the ADSL availability is rubbish and the providers I’d want to go with don’t even provide in Newark… So like many I was stuck with only one option. Virgin Media…
I gave them a go, ordered the 10mb service well in advance to avoid being without internet at the new house however they messed that up. For a start the nearest installation date was a week after moving in and the day before installation they advised they couldn’t install it just yet as they needed to do some work before they could come around, apparently 2 1/2 weeks isn’t a large enough time-range for them to get their act together.
This was going to leave me without the internet for about 2 weeks and as networking student (now with a networking degree) I thought I could solve this problem and I did!
One of the advantages of the house is that it is a stone’s throw away from my parents’ house, the house I grew up in, the house with the internet. I quickly worked there is an option three. Steal some internet from someone else. Having discovered this I noticed that the houses are near enough to setup a wireless bridge and as I have access to my parents’ house it was very easy to reconfigure everything so I could setup two D-Link DIR-615 access points running DD-WRT to provide a wireless bridge.
An hour later I had the internet. My parents have Virgin 10mb and now so do I. So I thought to myself, do I even need my own internet connection? The answer is probably not, I have access to the 10mb via the wireless link, I get 10mb speeds, I do all my downloading at night, I’m now at work all day and the wireless doesn’t affect xbox live game play… So I got my Virgin install cancelled and now I’m saving just a little bit more because I’m stealing my parents internet and they’re OK with it.
I’d recommend it to anyone, if you’re in the position to do so… I may even write a how-to on it sometime although the information is already on Google.
Times are Changing
Well its been a busy month or two, firstly I’ve finished University with a soon to be degree, as long as I didn’t mess it all up but secondly I’ve started work in my new job. Lots have changed in the past couple of weeks. I now no longer have a desktop computer, I have acquired two MacBooks via work and I’ve moved back to my home town. It all still seems a little surreal, ask me if I would be working with Mac’s during placement I would probably have said no, to be honest I probably would have said maybe, I never tend to think that far ahead in the future and this is an example why.
Not much else to report but I figure I’d drop a line to the internet, I’ve moved the blog over to a new domain yet again, I wanted to move away from the named domain to a less formal/ professional one, no reason just did.. May not even stick.. it’ll probably hit my google rank if I have one though, probably should stop messing with it.
I suppose I should mention HASystem, my current ongoing project… Andy has gone a little crazy with this coding magic and implemented 2.0, a complete remake which is similar in some respects but 2.0 is based around plugins which seem to be working much better. It allows us to implement new features a lot better. One of which is a Shopping List which I am currently in the process of writing.
So internet, until next time…
Updates – Home Automation App & Uni
So its been a while internet, I’ve been a little lazy on the blog posting front but I’ve had University to finish! Although its not over yet the end is in sight in just under 5 days! Its not really been a stressed couple of months but it has been busy, although looking back I’ve had plenty on time for chilling out, so maybe not as busy as you think, but it has been busy enough not to post any commits to the Home Automation project I’ve been working on with Andrew… That has changed over the last couple of days and I’ve finally got the HA Windows Phone 7 client to a standard which I like, its been half done for a while now! So I guess that really does mark the end of university now that I have time for awesome projects again!
The client for HA has really got me in to programming for the platform, I’m no epic programmer but I can see myself writing a few public apps if and when I come up with some ideas! Although Matt has recently got an Android phone it really has woken me up to the fact WP7 is still limited on the App front from the major players etc, for example Sky News, that is probably the one app I miss the most on the iPhone. It really did keep me up to date on the world outside of student life! I’m not going to bail just yet though on WP7 I’m sure they’ll be working on it, if not they hopefully will start soon!
So what’s changed in the Home Automation Project…
The task list now includes saved tasks, they are a list of tasks or other non-script tasks, for example uTorrent, you can access the uTorrent API via HA.
Never bothered implementing the Wake On Lan support for the client. As I now have a new Asrock HTPC on the way I thought I best get it done soon! Also properly implemented the settings and application menu bar!
Now to put my new found skills too making an app to put on the market place!
