HA or Home Automation System is a result from visiting this site and wanting a similar sort of system. For a while now I’ve considering doing something like this but never actually getting around to it mainly because of University and moving house every year.

So I started writing a program. This was about a month ago when I should have been doing my Final Year Project but lets forget about that for now. HA started out simply doing stuff I was going via RDP on my Windows Home Server which included executing various scripts to sort TV Shows and backup websites/work/svn etc.

HA is a server and client application where the server does all the work. The client is just a client and tells the server what to do. This was loosely based on two year old piece of work called MD5 Cracker, that was an assignment and was a distributed system to cracking an MD5 hash, I pretty much just copied the network code and updated it to use JSON although it wasn’t the best it worked! This is when Andrew got on board and its become a joint project between us. Andy is doing a programming degree and is probably the cleverest person I know. It has worked some magic and made everything all cool and stuff!

So here is what HA is at the moment!

HAServer

Running on the Windows Home Server HAServer is headless and currently does the following

• Runs tasks and scripts on the server
• Directly controls X10 devices via a CM11u and keeps track of states
• Wakes sleeping computers via WOL
• Some interfacing with XBMC
• Communication via HTTP and TCP using JSON.

Being a month old the system is quite limited in features but we have big plans!

HAClient

HAClient is the main client and control interface for HAServer, its got the following features

• Setup-less (It gets the HAServer IP via broadcast)
• Configures settings on HAServer
• Fully supports all features on the HAServer
• Displays XBMC information and provides audio controls
• Able to switch x10 devices on and off

HAWP7

Since getting a developer unlock for my phone I been working on my client for my HTC HD7 Windows Phone Device. It currently support X10 via the HTTP API

HAAndroid

Andy has a Nexus One and wrote a client for it..

Still pretty early days but there you go, I’ll try to keep the site updated with its progress.. In the mean time here is an awesome picture Matt took with this new camera.

Update: HASystem got featured in this months “My Automated Home” over at automatedhome.co.uk : My Automated Home: Tom Lawrence – Home Brew X10 Plus XMBC Control

Anyway this got me thinking of how much all my computers and various things consume, actually I’ve been thinking of this for a while but have only just stolen a watt-measure-thingy from my dad, who seems to get given them all the time by various companies.

So, I finally got my hands on one of these things and the first thing I thought I’d test is Stewie! For those who don’t know Stewie is my Windows Home Server.. It has the following

• 700w power supply
• 7 harddrives (2 x “green” harddrives)
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor

Matt and I both decided to guess the number of watts this beast of a server consumes. Matt suggested 400watts and I around 200-250watts. The result was a very surprising average of 150watts on idle and around 160watts when we turned on BOINC and started streaming some files! Pretty impressive I thought!

So how much does it cost to keep my server on all the time? Well we can work that out quite quickly with some simple Math!

Watts x Hours Used / 1000 x Cost per kilowatt = Total Cost!
so..
155 x 8760 / 1000 * 0.10p = £135.78

That is around £135 a year to run a computer on for a year! It is not bad and considering mine is pretty much in use / doing something all the time its very reasonable I think..

HideMediaFiles is a small tool to hide all the media information in your media directory, all those fanart images and nfo’s. If your like me when you go directly to the folder it annoys you because its filled with lots of useful but annoying to look at files.

So anyway more info and a download link can be found over at the new App page! Here

Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC.  The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.

The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.

More on this soon!

I haven’t however watched it enough since to see if the cooler actually works but reading around others seem to think so. Its also stopped acting up. After a little playing around after my previous post, here. It turned out the Windows Home Server wasn’t 100% happy with the Xtreamer on the network. Its fine now, the problem was the WHS, at idle spun down the hard drives when they were not in use and when the Xtreamer started to stream a file there was a delay while the hard-drives spin back up. This is ok when your streaming to Boxee, a PC etc as there is about a 2 second delay the Xtreamer however seems to get confused. I think I’ll file a bug report when I can test this more.
On a similar note the Xtreamer with its HDMI output is pushing me towards getting a HD TV. I’ve been watching the new series Life on BBC/iPlayer and the awesome shots they have in HD are just amazing but I’m stuck watching it on my PC monitor… for now.. any recommendations?

I have mine set-up on the Wireless N router (D-Link DIR-655) which doesn’t cause any problems at all. I wasn’t sure how well the wireless would work, as I don’t have the option to hook it up to a real connection, but no complaints with the wireless. One annoying point is the cooling fan inside the device. Its whinny even on the lowest of the low settings, sound a bit like a fly buzzing around. However you can turn it off but as I found out the other night after about 4 hours of streaming or being turned on its performance starts to get affected by it over heating. A new head sink add-on has just been released but still it shouldn’t really over heat.

Although when it works its a really good little device. The navigating the menus are quick but sometimes there is a little delay from the remote. I hope a firmware update maybe fixes of these issues when it arrived it needed updating so maybe another one is in the wind. I should ask google.

This is not suppose to be a rant or a review of it I’m just saying. I’ll keep this updated. I think I’ll get this heat sink and with a firmware update then maybe all these problems with go away!

The second reason for going back home was to install the new server I mentioned a week or so ago. I’d finished setting all I could up at my house in Birmingham and it was time to install it on the network. Everything went smoothly but I managed to corrupt the XP VM as I forgot to check if the SATA cables had survived the transportation. Every time I move a computer one or two SATA cables seem to come loose. I never seem to remember to check.

All went well however I installed the Windows Home Server Connector software on each pc and over night, I think within an hour all the workstations had been backed up. I was quite impressed this the time it took and in total it only used 58GB. I did not set it up to backup the server though. I wasn’t too sure if it would play nice but also I wanted to use SBS backup tool for backing up the server. It allows more access to things like e-mails than the home server would. I might set-up both just to be safe some time. I half expected to come back to Birmingham and chill out on Saturday night but after driving to Sheffield and installing the server I was too tired to drive and still had a few things to fix at the unit.

So that was my weekend. Last week was quite busy at work as well I learnt lot during the course of the week but I’ll post on that later. I think there are a few things that I need to say for my placement dairy.

On other note the US TV season has started so some new TV shows should be coming our way quite soon. I’ve also got myself a new gizmo! Its called  TheXtremer and should be arriving today. Its to replace my Xbox which is running XBMC that I use to stream video to the TV in the living room. The Birmingham house doesn’t have an Ethernet port in the living room so the wireless N feature should be quite handy. I’m not sure how well it is going to work but I’ll keep you posted!

I’ll leave you with a picture I took of the server setup… (WHS on the left)

Anyway back to the point. Why the nice shiny server I hear you ask? Well its part of a plan I am putting in place in order to keep everything on the business computers backed up! There is a simple backup system in place but it doesn’t cover everything. Only the important bits. So its Windows Home Server to the rescue. Yep that’s right I’m going to put Windows Home Server on the new machine. Windows Home Server (WHS) is quite handy when it comes to small business’s and/or offices. In this case the backup of networked computers is the main reason WHS is being deployed and here is why…

- Backs up all the computers daily
- Pretty much restore a computer in 10 minutes.
- Restore a whole computer or that file you just deleted
- Doesn’t use up terabytes of data space

Its an all round win. You can aswell, with a bit of a nudge join it to a domain and run services on it like Virtual Machines, DNS, FTP etc etc..

I’m not the only one deploying WHS in a small business. Microsoft even recommends it and are starting to push the idea to small business’s…

More Info Here

Birmingham its self has been awesome. Last Monday I went with my new flatmate and his friends to The Rainbow to see Kid British! What a great band and they played amazing live! I also saw The Anomalies which were also awesome and other band which were very good but I have no idea what they were called… Any who it got me in the mood for V festival which is only a month away!

My placement has been a real learning curve and I think its going to get steeper which is always fun. I’m currently looking at a Windows PBX called 3CX which may be implemented at the office.

This weekend I’ll hopefully get round to having a look at the new update for Windows Home Server. Power Pack 3 has been released under a BETA tag, which means its not quite ready for the public as it might still have bugs in the software. It brings support for Windows 7 enhancements to Windows Media Centre. Check it out here.

On that note I have been checking out a new media centre called Boxee! After leaving the Stafford house the original Xbox running XBMC has been retired as I no longer have a TV (Soon to change) so I started using Boxee as a Windows version had just been released. I was very impressed initially and continue to be bemused by its features. Boxee is based on XBMC but does a much better job at presenting its self. The applications feature is also a great edition allowing UK users to watch BBC iPlayer, although here in Birmingham I am on 2mb broadband so can’t stream the HD content. I was going to set up XBMC on my new TV though a PC rather than an the Xbox but I think now it’ll be running Boxee so watch this space!.. Going to have a to buy a TV first though.. and maybe a new small computer..??

Also a quick GOOD LUCK to Andrew, Michael and Dave who are in Germany finishing their first week on placement!

May has been an interesting month, I have turned 20, which I still find a little fascinating. It seems a long time yet the last 4/5 years have gone so fast.. Does time speed up as you get older? I’ve moved back home after two years (I don’t think two weeks last summer counted) and well I can’t think of anything to add to the list but anyway…

In my last post I forgot to mention I got a little camera for my birthday.. I’m not a mad snapper but I thought it be nice to have one.. so when I grab some nice photos a new section will come to life on the blog, its hiding away as its got nothing to show for now.

I finally got round to installing Windows 7 on my laptop which I am currently using to write this post. I’m liking the new features and tweaks that keep surprising me, the latest is the sub menus on the start menu. Pined items when hovered over produce a sub menu with options for you, for example its shows the recent history of the devices you have connected to with Remote Desktop which skips a step when accessing the machines as shown below…

Which reminds me! I’ve been quite impressed with Windows Home Server lately which is installed on Stewie. After reading up on the way Home Server backups machines and the restore process when I first purchased the operating system. I was quite confident that if and when my computer fell over it would be ok as I could just restore it from a backup, I never tested this out though.. I suppose it was at a time that it it isn’t broke, don’t fix it as I was in the middle of uni and formatting a pc for the fun of it wasn’t my top 10 things to do.

However the time did come for me to use it. The process was so simple. The restore CD is a Live CD, which for those of you that don’t know, is a bootable operating system that doesn’t require or use a hard-drive . It didn’t require any drivers importing at all and after a few clicks the machine was restoring its self.. Magic!!

So magic I have to say… Matt, a house mate, an avid Mac fan.. has got him self one. A Tranquil SQA-5H I believe… and I do believe soon the Home Server will be able to take backup images of Apple Mac’s using the Time Machine application.. not sure though…

On this point I have to finish and make my way back to Stafford..