Home Automation System
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
June
I don’t like to say I’ve not posted for a while but I haven’t really updated the site on my ongoings lately just my new gadgets and tech which actually reminds me I’ve not reviewed or posted about my new quite awesome laptop.
We’ve had some new tech at work too. I’ve had my hands on a HTC Desire this week, I’ve been quite impressed with Android and the HTC phone but its not something I’ve got used too but then I’ve not had my sim in and my iPhone as always been in reach. I could though see myself hopping over to Android in the future. Looking at the iPhone 4 details nothing really shouts awesome which is good as it won’t make my iPhone 3gs to obsolete. I can however see future Android phones having some quite epic features and being able to root it and unlock more sounds pretty cool add-ons like tethering for free just seals the deal!
Last week marked a slight milestone for me on placement last week as well, firstly I kicked off my report for University but also I started the hand over period with my replacement. Although its 3 months of hand over it marks the time where I start taking a step back and sharing my knowledge.
I’ve also started preparing for going back to Staffs. I’ve got my moving date in the bag which is quite soon so I’ll be commuting for the final part of placement but I’d also been brushing up on my programming skills as I’ve had a tip off with regards to next years assignments and reading up on IPV6 as its likly that’ll be the subject of my final year project. I’m getting quite excited really it’ll be great to get back to work and
