Re: NEW ukha project

[Andy Bovingdon <bov@xxxxxxx>]

The SlimDevices unit looks quite neat - been chatting with them about
it. I would like to see something along those lines, but with a few HA
additions, such as:

a) Act as a pre-amp for audio with stereo out for connection to a power
amp, or more accurately - powered in-wall speakers. A digital out
would also be good. This is kind of what they do now. Eventually an
advanced unit handling multimedia would be good. A/V with 5.1 or 7.1
sound streamed from the central PC - but lets start simple :-)
b) The ability to act as an IR receiver and possibly an emitter also -
Grab IR and send it to the PC to route to the sources or to trigger
macros etc.
c) It should be possible to override the audio to make announcements
or to mute when the phone goes.
d) Built in microphone to permit voice control from the room, possibly
with some sort of noise cancellation capability to distinguish from
any audio it is delivering.
e) Built in motion sensor, light level sensor and thermometer.
f) Either connect via Cat5 or my preference would be 802.11b - via a PC
Card to allow for upgrade or Bluetooth options.
g) In wall or stand alone options
h) I would like to see some better integration between HA stuff and
DECT phone systems, especially the ISDN based ones which allow
multiple lines etc - great if the unit could display the phone
numbers and names of callers or to announce them before I walk
all the way to the nearest handset.
i) The PC should have the ability to display any arbitrary piece of
text on the device - from time to temperature and so on.

The unit should act on it's own communicating with other units and
the core system running back on a PC somewhere. It would be nice if
the display colour could be changed - like car head units, to match
the interior decor.

I had thought about using older PocketPC's with WLAN cards to do some
of what I wanted - the old mono iPaqs perhaps - small and quite capable
of decoding MP3 or WMA streams - not to mention video.

Now if you could make it fit into a light switch (double size naturally),
taking power from the socket, communicating via 802.11 to the PC while
controlling the lights for the switch it has replaced - easy home
automation that is faster than X10 and avoids additional twitter on the
power line.

Ok - I'm getting carried away here - time to stop :-)

At 01:00 PM 11-02-02 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>With the current talk about DDAR, I wondered if at any time the group,
>had given any consideration to the production of a ukha MP3 Player,
>along similar lines to the DDAR, and now Slimdevices products.
>
>Perhaps with the added advantage of integrating additional control into
>the display for HA purposes, eg Room temperature control ?
>
>As a background I've been looking at mp3elf, a tini powered solution
>which at the current time due to Dallas Semis supply problems I don't
>consider viable, there is however a large volume of data available on
>the web for MP3 Players, but as yet I've not seen an ethernet based
>player.
>
>Anyone interested ? I'm sure between the members of the group we have
>enough knowledge to implement this.
>
>Cheers
>
>Stuart
>
>
>
>For more information: http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
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___________________________________________________________________
ANDREW  BOVINGDON   Tarantella,  Vision Park   Tel: +44 7768 877170
Director,       Cambridge,  CB4 9ZR,  UK   Fax: +44 1223 518001
Product Marketing      www.tarantella.com       bov@xxxxxxx