Linux Home Automation

So I’ve been pretty slow at getting my house switched over to Misterhouse. Learning perl is a huge undertaking, especially for someone like me who refuses to code. The mailing lists are helpful. It would also help if I sat down for a few hours and really worked at it. I’ve only been tinkering periodically, and that isn’t getting me anywhere very fast.

I have been reading through the code to Mister House. It looks pretty amazing and appears to be exactly what I am after in regards to home automation. The voice portion looks very promising. Integrating it with x10 and front end tablets seems to be an excellent base on what I want to do.

Checkout this code snippet on a morning routine.

#———————————–
# Example of how to wake up somebody
#———————————–

if (said $v_wakeup_parents) {
$sleeping_parents = 0;
&pa_sleep_mode(‘all’, 0);
speak(“rooms=all Good morning everybody.  It is now $Time_Now on $Date_Now.”);
speak(“rooms=all The outside temperature is ” . convert_k2f((state $temp_outside)/10) . “degrees”);
speak(“rooms=all Sunrise today is at $Time_Sunrise, sunset is at $Time_Sunset”);
readit(“\\house\c\data\weather_conditions.txt”);
readit(“-rooms bedroom //house/c/homepage/mail/mail.txt”);

set $left_bedroom_light ON;
set $right_bedroom_light ON;

runit(“min”, “ir_cmd TV,POWER,5,1″);

&curtain_on(‘bedroom’, ‘open’);
}

That is exactly what I am looking for. That feature alone was something I wanted to have.

Ima get a vmware image of CentOS installed on my laptop and install Misterhouse and see how it works.

I updated the links on my site. It is mostly for my own benefit, because I am terrible at keeping track of links and bookmarks. I plan to bookmark sites I come across for my reference, since I use several different computers on a daily basis.

Currently the links at the right are as follows:

• Adam’s Linux HA Blog – a fellow linux HAer I found with google. I can’t seem to leave comments on his blog yet, but he seems to have a similar vision in some home automation stuff so I wanted to link him.
• Cepstral – this is a vendor for computerized voices. I am looking for a good sounding voice for my system, and I think that I have found it here. They have all sorts of voices, from guys to chix to specialty voices. Even have foreign languages.
• Heyu – this is linux software to control the CM11 X10 device which currently controls my house. It is very basic home control, using a combination of cron and events to control things.
• Main Linux HA site – Neil Cherry runs a fairly in depth linux ha website. I find many links are outdated or expired, but there is good info there still. This was my starting point.
• Minerva Linux HA – this is another site similar to Misterhouse, which is a backend type software for controlling your house with linux.
• Misterhouse – home control but this one uses perl, which can run on linux.
• Neil cherry’s Blog – Neil Cherry has a blog as well about home automation.

I have added yet another blog to my domain.

I am going to document and create a place for my home automation information. After watching the movie Ironman, and seeing Jarvis running the house, there must be something I can make that is similar to that. While I realize that was largely movie magic, the basis for all that stuff is possible.

I plan to create something similar powered by Linux. I have several Linux servers at home doing different jobs, and I love it. It’s rock solid, mostly virus proof, and the more I use it and learn, the more cool tricks I pick up and realize that most things can’t be done on Windows.

I plan to have forums on here, as well as a mailing list. I have grand visions on what I want to do to automate my home. Along the bottom of the main page, you will find a tab called Vision, which is where I will document what I plan to have my house do, and I will stroke off items as they come to fruition.