One down, one to go ...

Well I'm down to my final week of school for my Bachelor's degree. I have one more lab to hand in (it was a tough setup) and my final (next week). Then I'll take a little time off to rest up but I'm itching to code already so I don't know how much rest I'll get. You should see a lot more links being added and updated for my main web site - LinuxHA.com. Actually expect a lot of activity on all of them (HCS, LinuxHA Project, OpenRemote, etc.)

I'm hoping to put some work into my LinuxHA Project. I decided that I would try to build a HCS II SC emulator using Groovy to write the DSL and emulate it's hardware (i.e. the RS485 network). A hardware SC is the main controller, a Z80 processor, that runs XPRESS code. The SC is part of the HCS II project that was the 1988 idea of Steve Ciarcia, Engineer, Founder and Editorial Director of Circuit Cellar Magazine. It's an extremely flexible system with lots of digital and analog I/O support via it's use of inexepensive RS485 networked boards. But being over 20 years old, it's starting to show it's age and it needs to be brought into the 21^st century. My intention is to use a Linux SBC like the ALIX system. The advantage of using Linux is that it gives me is access to a vast array of tools (such as Java and Groovy) and I don't have to write an OS with network, file system, database, ... support (I think you get the idea). Let's face it if you have a HA system that doesn't have networking support it's most likely going to get ignored. Everything is on the Internet these days. In addition it can access any port on the system so it can interface to things like my USB Labjack and web based information.

Last but not least, I don't want to forget about the OpenRemote project. I hope to be going to CEDIA/Atlanta with the OpenRemote folks in September. I expect that during August I'll finally get all the components of OpenRemote up and running in my home (base system on the ASUS 202 and the OpenRemote App on my iPod). Then I can start adding in the equipment I have around my house. And yes, I intend to integrate the SC into the OpenRemote project. "One ring to rule them all" so to speak.