Now that’s a cool idea, sensors in the cars to know who is in or out. Excellent idea in fact, can it be done though as the signal from my keyfob thingy can’t reach the house from where I park on the drive so range could be an issue?

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Griffiths [mailto:mike@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 22 June 2001 11:25
To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Last Night in London?

Kieran

Where did you get the ibutttons from

I keep trying to buy them from the States without any success

I agree with your way I thinking on HA control

I’m luck that as my house is quite naturally dark If your in the house you normal need the lights on

All we normally do is tell the house we have entered (X10 code via Touchlinc to HomeVision)

And tell the house when either of us are going to bed

Sensor mats on the stairs cover most movement. And using HomeVision these react differently to the number of people in the house and whether they are in bed or not

I have a system with light sensors which turns off the lights in individual areas when the room has direct sunlight

But that’s as far as it goes really

What I really need is the security ibuttons to replace the X10 entry commands

And some low powered Transmitters in each car to keep track of who is in and out

We live miles in the country so any serious leaving of the house involves a car

Mike

Antena

Caernarfon

-----Original Message-----
From: Broadfoot, Kieran J [mailto:Kieran.Broadfoot@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Fri 22 June 2001 10:41
To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Last Night in London?

my head hurts lots. I tried to keep pace with Mr Gordon and this led to me leaving a little earlier than I would have liked.

We were talking about remote control and mark made a very interesting comment which included the following: "fillipino boys", "bugger" and "that". I didnt understand what he was trying to say ;-)

We had quite a few dicussions about the project and came up with a few ideas:

i. second ukha product - 1 and 2 gang wall switches controlled by xap. Standard wall sockets providing the same functionality as x10 just over tcp/ip and with state

ii. Maybe the project doesnt need a full software control system but rather a software API written in various languages. Maybe the HA masses would prefer a COM object they can embed into their VB? Or the perl geeks can have a perl module, or those java heads can get their hands on a jar file. Whatever way we produce it the important thing is that it keeps some of the complex stuff hidden with a nice little API for people. They could wrap objects and other groovy data objects round it if they want to build relationships between devices but alternatively they could something as simple as:

import net.sf.ukha.xap.*;

Xap x = new Xap();

public void main() {

Array a = new Array();

x.scanNet(a);

x.turnOnDevice(a[4]);

}

// you get the idea ....

iii. We also talked about sponsorship for the ukha project from letsautomate or laser etc to help cover up front costs for CE compliance etc. In return they get guaranteed stock and the honour of being the only stockists for x number of months or x amount of stock etc.

As to Mark mentioning my sensor ideas I get all evangelical about this and I know ive already spoken to Ian and Stu about it so my apologies if I am repeating myself.

I think there are two major issues with nearly all HA systems currently:

a. There is virtually no easy way to integrate the components in a controlled fashion (thats what makes the expensive systems a good deal if you could afford them)

b. Most people implement HA by controlling devices and then adding sensing capabilities

Im in the very early stages of implementing my own home brew system but Ive been thinking about it for quite some time and the idea of an intelligent house must indicate you start with setting up the house to be aware of its surroundings. I am basing this stuff on 1-wire/ibuttons and TINI as my chosen platform because it all supports java ;-)

Each room has a number of sensor modules. A module would be made up of a small breaboard containing a 64kbit iButton plus n+1 1-wire sensors (light, humidity, temp etc). Using the xml 1-wire project (on sourceforge) you can define relationships between 1-wire devices. The idea is that each sensor has its own local data storage on the nvram. This is then farmed off through an object model into a database for historical use. The great thing is that even if you lose the database you can still boot strap the house using the few hours worth of data on the nvram buttons.

Historical mapping of data provides trend analysis of the house status which can then be used with a bit of logic to define outcomes when situations occur. I wanted to be able to dim lights in a room to different levels depending on light levels in different parts of the room so you get a uniform light level across the room.

Remote controls are great until you forget where you put them ;-) so why not make the house keep track of how you do things and learn from you. It will then switch on devices at the right time etc. Now all I need is some bik sensors with 1-wire interfaces, and a 1-wire hub, and some electronic skills, and a life etc....

Anyway Ive started talking twaddle (again) but you catch my drift.

thanks

kieran

p/s Found some groovy stuff using vrml in java 3d. think I might have found the ideal vehicle for my systems front end. virtual movement through house and point/click -> on devices using a mouse click

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 9:53 AM
To: 'ukha_d@xxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Last Night in London?

It was a laugh. Four of us were there:

- Paul Gordon

- Kieran Broadfoot

- Martin Greenwood

- Mark Harrison

I only stayed for about an hour, but the others all seemed to have late passes :-)

Kieran has some interesting ideas about sensing, and automatic control of what happens in the house based on what the house detects is going on, rather than everything being remote-control-centric.

None of us like blokes with yellow, check, shirts.

Mark Harrison
IT Controller, eKingfisher

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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McCall [mailto:mark@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 22 June 2001 09:37
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx Subject: [ukha_d] Last Night in London?

How'd it go guys?

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http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
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RE: Last Night in London?