Tom's Space

HASystem 1.0 – What can it do?

Tom — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:53:38 +0000

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

Looking back at my previous posts and its all well and good saying that the server can schedule tasks and now supports plugins etc but what can you do with that? Well this is what I am doing with HASystem…

Sorts TVShows and Updates XBMC Library

With the use of external applications that correctly name and sort TVshows HASystem keeps my TV Show folder up to date, once it has done this it wakes the HTPC and updates the XBMC Library

Emails a list of new TV Shows

After updating XBMC HASystem emails me the latest TVShows that have been added, surprisingly handy

Remove seeded torrents

Every weekend HASystem checks uTorrent and removes torrents that have finished seeding

XBMC Movie Lights

XBMC tells HASystem when it starts playing a movie or TV show, hasystem is set to turn on the LED back lights I have behind the TV and turn off when the movie is stopped.

Security Cameras

A new addition in 1.0 is that I can view my IP Camera from anywhere with the use of the mobile clients.

Shopping List

Although I never seem to use any list applications I’d had in the past but HASystem can keep a shopping list and you can access it from anywhere on a mobile device.

There a still a few bugs and things to iron out, there is even a couple in these images, can you see one? but we are now on track to release this upon the internet, as it now only supports XBMC Eden we are going to hold off until Eden is in beta this is also going to give Andy chance for his latest “redesign” in which HAClient will also support plugins bringing HAsystem to version 1.1, we are guessing Eden will be in beta in the winter so we’re aiming for that but if your interested and getting a look or even helping out then drop me a message, we’re especially interested in anyone who has iPhone and iPad development experience or anyone we any feature suggestion, we’re currently working towards our needs but I’m sure there are many other uses for this, watering systems etc etc?

Feel free to join our Google Group.

Google Group : https://groups.google.com/group/hasystem?hl=en-GB

Summer Break – Benicassim (FIB)

Tom — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:28:46 +0000

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!

3 Days

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

Tom — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:37:47 +0000

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

Tom — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:31:36 +0000

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

Tom — Sun, 08 May 2011 08:00:45 +0000

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!

Home Automation System

Tom — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:10:53 +0000

I’ve hinted at this a few times, namely Windows Phone 7 App – HAWP7, so I thought I’d actually tell you what is it.

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

Saving Money / Hosted in the clouds / University

Tom — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:00:31 +0000

I’ve moved my site to a new cloud hosted server, it seems this site never stays in the same place for very long. This time though it was for a different reason, cost cutting. About 2 months ago I decided a co-location box in a data centre was just two expensive and for what it was costing I wasn’t getting enough out of it. At the moment its hosting various websites some I’m being paid for but it doesn’t cover the cost. They weren’t never supposed too, I got the box to learn some new skills which I’ve learnt and already put to good use so the time has naturally come now for a cheaper solution.

The box is not the only thing having its budget cut. Being close to the end of University I thought it would be wise to consider my future finances as I didn’t know what, if any, budget I’d have come summer. My phone contract is another expense that is taking a cut. Although I’ve got a new phone I purchased this out right as opposed to getting another phone contract and in the long term I’ll be saving money once I’ve moved to a sim-only contract..

Here are the sums…

Current Phone Contract
£35/month * 24 months = £840

New Phone Contract
£15/month * 24 months + Phone £270 = £630

In the next two years I’ll have saved £210 and I’ll be able to sell my new phone when I get bored of it.

Back to the hosting, I’ve opted for the Rackspace cloud not really for any reason but I suppose I already got to play with Amazon’s platform during placement so Rackspace is something new to add to my skill set I suppose. Pretty good service so far, I got the call to confirm and activate my account at 2am after opening my it at 1.50am.

Although the service is flexible I figure it’ll cost around £15 a month taking a guess at my current bandwidth consumption. So lets see how much I’ll be saving on hosting for the year…

Current Hosting Plan
£50 * 12 months = £600

New Hosting Plan
£15 * 12 months = £180

So in the next year in total I’ll have saved £625! WOW, no wonder I have no money at the moment!

I’m glad I had this cost cutting idea two months ago and started to put a plan in place to complete. Since then I’ve been offered a job after university. It would be very tempting now to just keep paying for what I’m using rather than finding cheaper alternatives etc…

All I need to do now is find a hosted Exchange solution as I can’t do without that! The initial plan was at my next house to get an ISP that offers multiple static IP addresses thus I could then host my exchange server at home! Since then I’ve got a job and had to consider on where I’ll be living. As it turns out I’ve decided to commute from Newark and will move into a house there, but guess what, the only decent ISP in Newark is Virgin Media and they don’t offer such a service as I desire so I’m shelving that idea for the time being.

Although on the plus side it should be a cheaper cost of living so I’ll be saving more money.. Although I need to decide on what I’ll be spending this money on! I’ve got a few ideas..

My holiday in Spain at the FIB festival..
A nice huge TV!

Windows Phone 7 App – HAWP7

Tom — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:00:45 +0000

Its not taken long but I’ve written my first app, called at the moment a very boring name of HAWP7 the app allows me to turn on or off lights in my house.. It is actually is part of a wider system that I am working on which is being called HA (my creative name thinking skills need working on). HA or Home Automation System is program I am working on with Andy over at A-Jackson.co.uk. The idea is that HA will be able to control all aspects of home automation in our homes, currently still in the early days we have been developing it along side our final year projects, at times its taken over as it seems much more interesting than our projects do.

So having just got a Windows Phone I’d thought I’d write a client to interface with the HA Server I have running on my WHS, so after a little coding help as I’m not a programmer but seem to be getting quite good I came up with this.. A client that allows me to turn on or off all the x10 devices I have, which isn’t many to be honest but I’ve nabbed some more of ebay! The app shows via the light bulb image what lights are currently on and once pressed the devices are turned off via HAServer on the WHS and the list of devices updated.

New Phone – HTC HD7

Tom — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:26:45 +0000

I’ve been after a new phone ever since I cracked the replacement screen about a week after replacing it. My 24 month contract has been stopping from getting a new phone as I still have a couple of months to wait. Not anymore though, the other day I decided I’d actually get a new phone, the idea has been flying around for quite some time (the idea being to get a phone out right and get a cheaper sim-only contract). I dislike paying £35 a month and being strapped down for 2 years and I think I’d get better value for money buying a phone out right and paying £10-£15 a month instead. Plus it also means I can trade/sell/buy another phone when I like!

So, I don’t know why but I somehow came to the conclusion that I wanted a HD7 with Windows Phone 7 and I’m glad I did. The phone is awesome, after having the same standard interface on the iPhone it is refreshing being able to swipe around Windows Phone 7. Its clean and simple and doesn’t get cluttered up when you install more than 10 apps. One of my dislikes with the iPhone is that you had to manage the interface, you had to decide where apps go and within no time you have around 5 screens of apps… WP7 is much simpler giving you an alphabetical list of applications..

Coming from the 3GS it is also nice to have a bigger screen although WP7 doesn’t seem to maximise the space it has available I think it works though, gives a much cleaner, less cluttered user interface.

One major annoyance though is that BBC iPlayer isn’t supported, although I read that Flash will soon be available it’s quite annoying not being able to watch iPlayer whenever I like. You have to remember it’s pretty new compared to Android or iPhone so I suspect it will be addresses soon!

This post seems to have developed in to more of a review / how WP7 is better than iPhone and I suppose it is in my mind. Although I did like the iPhone when it first arrived after two years and the fact everyone seems to have one takes away that brand new gadget that no one else has feeling, which for a techy person like me, is pretty important to be honest… This brings me to its development support…

Unlike Android you have to pay the £65 to unlock your phone for development, even just to run your own homebrew apps you’ve got to part with £65… I was annoyed when I discovered this information and was ready to start hacking the phone to bypass it, however I remembered and learnt that Microsoft likes students and offers it free with Dream spark which is great but I’m only a student for another couple of months and after than its £65 down the drain every year, maybe I should develop an app to recover the cost? Any ideas?

It is quite annoying that you have to pay but I can see why, it’s slightly disconcerting that Android and Google provide no moderation on its app store. Being open source is great but as everyone learns from the days in high school… Not all the kids play nicely… Hearing that over 50,000 Android devices are infected with a rootkit, whispering back to hacker HQ with you information is a little scary. You shouldn’t have to worry about your phone getting a virus; you want it to just work.

Anyway, the phone is pretty awesome, the battery life opinion is yet to be decided upon but generally I’m very happy with it. The People/Contacts tile is great adding everyone you know on Facebook, Outlook and Windows live which prompts you to remove those contacts you’ve not spoken too since forever but a little contract purge is something everyone has to do sometime…

Power Consumption! – The cost of running a server…

Tom — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:25:13 +0000

We got our quarterly bill the other week and it appeared quite high. Gas and Electric came to a grand total of £520! It doesn’t bother me to be honest, I’ll turn a light off when its not being used but I don’t take that extra step to ensure I’m saving the planet or saving money although we a certain application I’m working on I may just start saving some pennies! More on that later..

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..