kpvxl This months My Automated home feature comes from Tom Lawrence, a final year student at Staffordshire University. along with his friend Andy Jackson, he has created a bespoke C# home automation system which controls X10 as well as XBMC with clients for Android as well as Windows Phone.
Submission by:Tom Lawrence – I’m Tom, I’m a student with two months left at Staffordshire University. I’m currently getting quite distracted from my final year project with a little side project I call HA. In the last year I’ve got much more as well as much more interested in home automation / theatre systems.
I expect my setup is around 3 years old as well as started when I moved out of Halls as well as changes each time I relocation house… In the beginning there was the Windows home server with a hacked Xbox running XBMC. Next, during my placement year the Xbox was replaced with an Xtreamer as well as now I’m back for my final year I have a rather large HTPC connected to a rather small computer monitor in the living room. Being a student I’ve had to work with a low budget but it’s not all bad; the HTPC does have 5.1 surroundsound!
I’ve been keen on home automation for some time as well as could see myself having some sort of system when I finished university as well as was much more settled into a house but I never really took any type of steps to start such a system. That changed after I was linked to avbrand.com by Andy, a friend with very much similar setups as well as plans for the future. After reading the site I knew I had to create a similar system, so I am…
I knew of other systems such as mister house but I didn’t want to customise a system to my needs, I wanted to make my own so, HA was born.
I mashed together some code, I’m not a programmer, I have had various programming modules at university but my degree is in networking but it wasn’t long before Andy, who is a programmer got on board as well as it took off. Andy has does a lot of work on the network/communication side allowing it to be scalable for the future. It’s now become very much a joint project between ourselves. so that is it?
HAServer is the brains behind the operation running on the Windows home Server. Its written in C# as well as started out executing various scripts based around TVSorter, an application Andy previously wrote, before I was RDP’ing to the Windows home Server so it was natural for this to be the first task for HA to do.
It now has a small feature list but considering it’s just over a month old, stable as well as we both have final year projects we ought to be working on its pretty outstanding if you ask me, although a lot of work recently has gone on behind the scenes code rather than features as such…
Directly controls X10 modules through CM11u
Executes various tasks with a task scheduler
Interfaces with XBMC
WOL Support
FTP Upload
HTTP API
The idea we have is that HAServer will do all the essential functions in the background as well as clients are mere frontends to the system. One example of this is the core client is settings-less. It receives the server IP through broadcast as well as downloads the settings from the server which the client then can update. The server has a database but communicates to clients using JSON through TCP or the HTTP API.
HAClient is a fully blown client. The idea for HAClient is that it will fully support HAServer as well as sub clients will do particular functions. HAClient’s feature list includes
Requires no initial configuration
Allows configuration of HAServer
Interfaces with XBMC, displays audio as well as video information as well as some remote control functions
Supports all server functions
Sub Clients
The idea behind Subclients was that they will do particular things as well as not fully support all server functions. This was something that would happen after university but we could not resist developing a few.
HAWP7 – I in the last couple of days have replaced my iphone with a HTC HD7 as well as rapidly made a client for Windows phone. currently only supporting the x10 function through the HTTP API it’ll soon be able to execute scripts as well as wake computers.
HAAndroid – Andy has an Android device as well as created HAAndroid. This client supports X10, WOL as well as Tasks.
HAPython – This is a easy script allowing XBMC from the remote to turn on/off x10 devices.
Future plans – The main plan at the moment is the boring stuff, make sure what we have is working as well as comment what we have done so we don’t forget after university when we have much more time to work on it.
Integrate with Windows home Server, make an addin for the console…
Make a client for the O2 Joggler
Integrate much more with XBMC (x10 film mode etc)
Integrate a CCTV system
Have a standard interface between HAServer as well as Arduino
Interface with our next houses, have to wait as well as see what they offer firstthough!
We have no plans to release this as a system but I like to think we could one day. currently we both run the application at our student houses as well as both lucky have got jobs after university so once settled I suspect the feature list will grow, we have numerous ideas mostly all requiring money to purchase extra hardware. Its definately an exciting project..
Tom Lawrence tom-lawrence.co.uk : Andy Jackson a-jackson.co.uk : X10 CM12U computer Interface
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