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Growing up I used to watch the BBC TV programme
Tomorrow's world and
was in awe of the amazing futuristic houses and gadgets. At
University I wired up our doorbell to our Novell Netware server so in
our shared house we could all know someone was at the door; although
being students it didn't make anyone get up to answer it. When I bought by own house I was
determined to see what home gadgets would actually be useful and fun.
There are many, many existing home automation systems at all price
ranges, but most are based on Windows. It seemed much more fun to
experiment for myself and implement some home automation for our
house on a small budget. And the final requirement was that everything
would run on Linux or open source software -- I didn't want to risk my house on an instable
OS that I had no control over.
My system has been running since 2001 and I've documented a few
of the projects, failed attempts, and software here.
Tablet Design Overhaul (26 Apr 2006)
The biggest problem with my home-grown Home Automation system was that
I'm not a graphic designer...
1-wire Hardware (02 Apr 2006)
I use a Dallas 1-wire
network for temperature sensing and control around the house...
Displaying a moving image with Perl/Tk (12 Mar 2006)
My home automation tablets use Perl/Tk as their user interface which
makes coding and prototyping really quick and easy and works on both
Linux and Windows platforms...
Controlling a Plasma Screen via the Internet (20 Nov 2005)
Earlier this year I finally got around to buying a replacement TV, and
settled on a Hitachi PD7200 plasma...
Live outdoor temperature (updated every few minutes, hit reload) (17 Jun 2005)
Intelliswitch Wall Dimmers (08 Oct 2004)
We didn't think much about lighting when our house was being built, so
it ended up being fitted out by the builder just like every other new
home with standard white plate light switches...
Custom software using Jabber/XMPP (11 Sep 2003)
Protocol: Jabber
I toyed with several ways of dealing with the home automation system...
Mounting a Fujisu Point tablet on the wall (23 Jul 2003)
I wanted to be able to mount the Fujitsu Point 510 on the wall...
Brief Overview (13 Jul 2003)
Infrastructure
3 CAT5 cables to most rooms in the house...
My HA-related weblog articles
see all at flickr.com
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