Linux Home Automation

HCS II & DollHouse

2012-01-24T22:32:00.001-05:00

As I said the other day, my thoughts on home automation have brought me back to the 1988 HCS II. At a high level view, the HCS II is a relatively simple system to understand. At the center is the z180 based Supervisory controller (SC). It has a RTOS and user language called XPRESS. XPRESS is basically a loop that supports if/then/else logic. There's support for 16 bit, signed, integer math and

Open Source HA

2012-01-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

I've decided not to do my Home Automation Presentation this year at the 2012 - Trenton Computer Festival as I'm still trying to deal with my new work load. I'm not very happy about it but I think I've learned enough over the last year to know that until I get a handle on my work load my spare time is reserved for eating and sleeping. It's gotten so bad that I've barely had time to code anything!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

Well last year was not a good year (but it wasn't a bad year either). A lot of stress and change. I'm hoping this year will be a lot better. So far it looks like it's following the same roller coaster ride as last year. Let's see if I can get off this ride before it wrecks. My wife picked out some very nice Christmas presents this year. I received man Dr. Who related gifts. One that sticks out

Christmas toys and Geeks

2011-12-02T12:21:00.001-05:00

This Christmas I'm giving out some interesting toys to my technologist friends. I've picked up a Color Nook to one friend who is less interested in technology than reading. We'll do a bit of hacking to add a few features to the nook (like ftp/scp capabilities). I'll also throw in electronic subscriptions to his favorite magazine (Nut-n-Volts). My other friend will be getting an Ethernet Arduino

Hackerspaces/Makerspaces

2011-10-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wanted to sit down with creative people and just create something? Work with folks of similar minds but of different backgrounds? I have and I've noticed others have too. That's why the emergence of Make Magazine and Make Conferences have come about. More people have gotten interested in making things, complex things, recycled things. Things a lot of geeks (and makers) are

The Barnes and Noble Color Nook

2011-10-05T12:37:00.000-04:00

I've been interested in getting two things. One is a decent Android based touch tablet and the other is a portable reader (I'm tired of dragging the laptop into the bathroom ;-)). I actually do a lot of reading so I thought an e-reader would be more comfortable than a laptop. So far I've been correct in that assumption. :-). I'm more or less happy with the Nook. It's easy to read. I dislike that

Something new

2011-08-05T00:27:00.000-04:00

Yes it's been a few months since I posted a blog. I've been trying to relax as my new job has me busy learning alot of new things for work. I've got a stack of classes and books to catch up on. And I've got to write some Perl code to make my job much easier to do (Systems test). In my free time I've just begun putting together experimental code chunks for DollHouse. While working out

My thoughts on my 2011 TCF HA Presentation

2011-04-24T12:03:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, April 2nd, I gave another HA presentation at the 36th annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF). The presentation went well though there were a few oddities like the Insteon pausing, Microsoft Windows insisting on telling me about new devices (argh!) and the fact that I only had 4 hours sleep the night before. During the presentation my friends were letting me know how much time I had

2011, the year of the Smart Home

2011-02-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

It's a busy time in the home automation world. January is the time of the year when vendors show off their wares in show, after show, after show. And this year it appears the the convergence of the ARM processor, the Android OS, the Linux Embedded OS and various home automation protocols is about to flood the world with real smart home technology. This looks to be the year of Home Automation!

Various home automation

2011-01-19T22:05:00.001-05:00

I have been interested in the MiCasaVerde (MCV) Vera unit for a while so when a chance to pick one up cheap rolled around I took advantage of that chance. So a couple of weeks ago I picked up a MiCasaVerde Vera version 1. The Vera unit (both version 1 and 2) can directly support Z-Wave, Insteon and X10 (?, maybe). I'm currently using it with just the Z-Wave devices. It has a web interface and it

Happy New Year!

2010-12-30T15:46:00.000-05:00

Okay so I'm early. My mind is a bit on overload with all these technologies running through my head and the events of the last week: a blizzard which I'm still digging out of and my friend George Poko passed away suddenly, rest in peace George. ;-( As his brother-in-law said at the wake: 'I've never heard an unkind word out of George's mouth'. In the 20+ years I've know him I can't say I know

It's the holiday season, it's time to automate!

2010-12-11T23:18:00.000-05:00

Yes it's that time of the year again when geeks, nerds and hardware hackers turn their minds to automating their holiday lights. ;-) It's a busy time for me too as I squeeze is as much work as I can before the end of the year, burn off vacation days before the end of the year & prepare for the holidays. At home I'm busy with family, chores, tuning the home automation network and preparing my

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

2010-11-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

For those in the US, Happy Thanksgiving and for everyone may you always have plenty to give thanks for. I've been busy with my preparations for my TCF Home Automation presentation on Saturday, April 2nd. I've been tuning up my MisterHouse (MH) setup on my DollHouse. I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed with the presentation but I'll see if I can present to one of the local user groups before

An interesting week

2010-11-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

The other day I received an email from a friend that I hadn't heard from in a while. This is not unusual as we are adults and we all lead busy lives. His HCS II HA system died and he was in need of a spare Supervisory Controller (SC - basically the brains of the device). Luckily I have a spare SC so his system will be back up and running soon. He also picked up some new hardware from

ARM, Java, Groovy!

2010-11-12T20:08:00.000-05:00

No I'm not having flashbacks to the 60's (with awful memories of teens running around wearing sack clothes chanting something ... ew!). I've been busy working with my Sheeva Plug computer (and a second unit on the way). I have installed Misterhouse on it and I decided to get Java and Groovy thrown on to boot. Misterhouse is written in Perl and I'd like to write my next HA package in something a

Smart phones, smart homes, Smart World

2010-11-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

I read an interesting article from the Economist, written by Ludwig Siegele titled Smart World. The article and accompanying videos are thought provoking (and not what I expected from a magazine called the economist - a major thumbs up guys!). The article starts out explaining how we basically live in two worlds, the day to day "real world" and the digital one. But that is starting to change,

Free WiFi access may be dangerous, you go first ...

2010-10-10T12:23:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have received emails or have seen advertisements for free WiFi access from your local ISP. It sounds like a great idea especially since many of us have these nice smart phones or netbooks with WiFi on them. You enable your WiFi, use the advertised network and sign with your browser and away you go, easy! But how secure are these access points? The ones I've seen so far have had

NASA we have a problem, yeah I can hold ...

2010-10-01T13:19:00.001-04:00

The warning has been told (you're running out of IPv4 addresses) and the towns remain quiet (only few web sites have IPv6). It's been debated around the world (now on Slashdot: There Is No Plan B, the Ugly Transition To IPv6 and DSLReports: Article: "...why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly") and some folks want more time to invent new ways to postpone the inevitable - we're moving to

Head in the cloud

2010-09-06T19:32:00.001-04:00

As usual my mind is adrift with ideas. Recently I upgraded my phone from a Pantech Windows CE smart phone (6.2?) to a Samsung Captivate Android based smart phone (2.1). So far I'm pleased with it though some of the apps are lacking. What I really like is the screen. I can see it in sun light and it isn't as dim as the iPhone (which looks a little washed out). I also like the fact that while I'm

IPv6 Security

2010-08-08T13:46:00.001-04:00

I found a Register article on IPv6 Security that provided the link to an IPv6 talk at DEFCON 2010 - Who Cares About IPv6?. At first I thought the Register article was a little over the top but reading the calmer presentation explained the issues in a much calmer fashion. Yes, we'll be having many IPv6 growing pains. Yes, we have a lot to learn. And yes, it's going to be painful. Plain and simple

My Smart Phone upgrade!

2010-07-27T12:43:00.001-04:00

Well, I finally went out and upgraded to a nice new Samsung Captivate Smart Phone with Android OS on the AT&T Wireless Network. Now I can surf and talk on the phone at the same time but with a lot more ease. I also picked up a Plantronix Bluetooth ear piece to make this easier. This is an upgrade for my Windows Smart Phone (NO more Windows phones for me). I dislike that phone now that I've had

Linux frustrations!!!

2010-07-12T21:57:00.000-04:00

What a weekend, I decided that I should get my IPv6 network up and properly running (I was missing the proper firewall rules so I couldn't leave the IPv6 up). After a great deal of frustration with ip6tables I finally managed to get a mostly workable firewall (icmpv6 packets are dropped). It really needs some more work and I'll work on that a little later on. I'll post all my related OpenWRT/

Linux, Bravia and DLNA

2010-06-22T17:09:00.002-04:00

I've had the Sony Bravia 52W5150 for a few months now. My wife and I are pretty happy with it (though my wife does most of the TV watching). I initially picked up the TV so my wife could watch the Yankee's games in HD and I like the features and the fact that it used Linux. The overall reviews were pretty good and the price was pretty good. So far I haven't figured out how to get at the Linux

Crash!

2010-04-25T19:48:00.004-04:00

Well finally I've gotten some rest (but I still need a lot more!). The last few weeks have been a bit much. It seemed that every week I've had a few things due and I've not had time to sit down and relax (or lay down and sleep properly). Yesterday (Saturday 04/24/2010) I did my HA Presentation at the Trenton Computer Festival. Unfortunately I was unable to bring the Doll House due to some

MisterPlug

2010-04-11T22:12:00.003-04:00

Well I in addition to having the SheevaPlug up and running I now have MisterHouse up and running on the Plug. After a few annoying modules that were needed (they tend to lead to other modules that are missing and needed etc. etc., annoying). Anyway I added HTTP::Date, HTML::FormatText and their dependencies and MH seems to be running okay. I'll work on getting X10, Insteon and a few other things

Sheevaplug, neat device!

2010-04-10T20:24:00.001-04:00

My friend D picked up a few Sheeva Dev Kits and decided to see what it can do. Now I've got one of them and by coincidence 'MisterBazyle' created a MisterPlug page for MisterHouse. So my goal is to put together MisterPlug. :-) So far the upgrade of the OS on the Sheeva didn't go well. I think most of the problems were with the OS drivers (both Windows and Linux) for the Sheeva's serial console/

Asus EEE 1005HA review Pt 4, another dead power supply

2010-03-06T18:20:00.001-05:00

So after just 4 months with the Asus netbook I've burned out two power supplies. I'm certain it's now out of warranty so I won't bother going that route. Instead I'll just use my adjustable lab power supply. Oddly enough my Asus B202 is running great and I'm not having trouble with it. So my verdict is I'll never purchase another Asus portable device. I can't trust they'll get the power supply

IPv6 up and running!

2010-02-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

Slightly odd weekend, I had to deal with the snow storm (shoveling the walk, twice - grrr plow driver!), finish up with installing the wireless software for OpenWRT, 8.09.2 and the WGT634u (kmod-ath5k). In between I installed one WGT634u which has no wireless card. This left more memory for IPv6. So I took the initial steps to start the tunnel between my WGT634u and Hurricane Electric (an IPv6

My Facebook account was lynched by a Facebook mob!?!

2010-02-03T02:03:00.001-05:00

Wow, I came home to a Inbox full of angry people! I'm not sure what it is that I was supposed to have done to offend (many claimed I was spying, quite a few were quite vulgar). Well my Linux Home Automation Facebook account has never gone out and asked for friends in any way. And I've only looked up people's profile when they sent a friend request. I don't know maybe my account was hacked (it

IPad, ZWave, OpenWRT and stuff

2010-02-01T00:12:00.001-05:00

Okay so I'm a little late with the IPad jokes but I was going to skip them anyway. The IPad seems to be a pretty good size. I see the point with everyone point out the lack of a web camera (as opposed to a phone/camera). It would have been nice to have the ability to video conferencing with the device. I actually seeing it being a very useful device for home automation (of course). Perfect size,

Asus EEE 1005HA review Pt 3

2010-01-17T22:27:00.000-05:00

Oops, looks like this got posted to the wrong blog. This is a blog entry from Dec. 11, 2009. It is being reposted here. So far I've had the 1005HA for about a month and I am pleased with it after the initial power supply problem. The replacement power supply is holding up very well though sometimes I find that it and the netbook get pretty warm. I've left XP on the system though I am being

Happy New Year, 2010!

2010-01-15T22:06:00.001-05:00

Note: the first part of this blog entry os from Dec 11th (yeah, I've been busy). The rest is more recent. Circuit Cellar and Elektor I just saw the Circuit Cellar/Elector announcement on Circuit Cellar. What has surprised me most is that I've only seen comment on the issue on the PIC List. I trust Steve Ciarcia and the Circuit Cellar staff's judgment and don't expect major changes. I am nervous

TouchBook has arrived!

2009-12-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

My new Always Innovating TouchBook has arrived. Since I've only had it a few minutes I'll refrain from any immediate comments. I can already see a few places where some slight improvements can be made (software stuff) but over all I am happy with the unit. :) I'm using it right now to type this blog entry. I have the unit with the detachable keyboard/battery. The keyboard is annoying me because

Scattered thoughts

2009-12-06T15:06:00.002-05:00

My mind is all over the place at the moment. I'm working on getting my self ready for applying for my MS degree. It will be a computer science degree. This is going to require a lot of studying and hard work but should be rewarding. Hopefully it will fill me with new ideas and knowledge to further my home automation projects. I'm hoping to see the Touch Book I've ordered. I haven't received

Asus EEE 1005HA review Pt 2

2009-10-28T09:12:00.001-04:00

As I posted earlier, My friend D got me a really nice Asus EEE 1005HA Netbook and up to this point I was really happy with it. Yesterday (2009/10/27) the power supply died. I search for power supply problems and I found a few but not enough to suggest an overall problem with this line of computers. What I did find was that the RMA process was filled with horror stories. So I went and ordered a

My head is swimming (misc. rants)

2009-10-24T19:55:00.000-04:00

Yes my head is swimming! I just finished my bachelor degree and I should be winding down a bit from learning, but I'm not. Okay, I don't every really expect to stop learning but a little time off would have been nice. :-) I decided to get back to coding and I've been working on a lot of HA stuff. A good portion of it for OpenRemote. This entails learning more about Java/Groovy (I'm reading

The future of home automation ;-)

2009-09-20T12:10:00.001-04:00

I found this on Slashdot and found it to be quite funny (it was also rated funny). The original quotes (under IPv6 Adoption Will Grow With Smart Grid Adoption, Hopes Cisco) were part of an IPv6 discussion. It seems that anything to do with the smart grid and home automation is now a hot topic as every company is getting into it. But these two comments seem to sum up the times quit well: by

Smart Grids

2009-09-08T10:06:00.001-04:00

Well I finally found something that does a halfway decent job of explaining the benefits of smart girds, smart homes and smart appliances. The Discovery Channel has a rather interesting video called: Smart Grids Make Fridges Smarter. The way it's presented is that the electric company tells your appliance something (what is this something?) and then something else (the appliance, so central home

Lots of stuff

2009-09-05T22:29:00.003-04:00

I just completed writing the initial Java/Groovy package to access the Elexol Ether IO24. I'll post the relevant information and code on my Getherio24 page when it's ready. At the moment there's a lot of code and Javadocs I need to work through. I know about the Perl EtherIO24 module written by Chris Luke, which means I can easily integrate that into Misterhouse. My Groovy project is meant for

Government mandating home automation? What are you nuts!

2009-08-02T11:26:00.001-04:00

Smarthouse (Australia) has a rather interesting article titled: Should Automation Systems Be Compulsory?. Actually it's meant for Australia but I can easily see someone trying to push this here (the USA) or elsewhere in the world. Yes I'm not a big fan of government intervention (except under extreme conditions). I tried to post my comments to their article but that failed. First let me say that

Touch Screen search

2009-07-31T19:25:00.001-04:00

I'm taking a little time off from my studies (my last final is this week, yeha!) and I've decided to post about my quest for touch screens. Over the years I've picked up a few things like the Palm (III, IIIxe and a IIIc), an HP Jornada (terrible software), a Chumby (again, software), the Nokia 770 (nice) and the Apple iPod (very) nice. I intend to get an iPhone as I've fallen in love with the

One down, one to go ...

2009-07-26T14:53:00.001-04:00

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

One Step forward, two steps back ...

2009-07-05T11:29:00.002-04:00

... now we're cha-cha-ing (Chris Knight - Real Genius). Anyway, in my constant quest for updated routing software and IPV6 I swapped out my WRT54G for a Netgear WGT624 (it's temporary, until I get the WRT upgraded and reconfigured). The WGT624 was picked up cheap for just this purpose. I attempted to put OpenWRT Kamikaze on the WRT only to find that it doesn't include wireless support because

LORHA and IPV6

2009-06-27T23:54:00.001-04:00

It's been a busy weekend, I skipped riding (I love to ride my bicycle) to get some house work done. In between I managed to get IPV6 working again and figure out a good portion of getting GRUB and a cross compiled Linux distribution install on a compact flash card. First let me explain that LORHA is my cute little acronym for my Linux OpenRemote Home Automation distribution. So far it's really

Where's the beef? MS Holm

2009-06-25T18:48:00.001-04:00

The other day I criticized Google's Wave protocol/product. Actually I criticized the presentation for being too 'ra-ra'. At the moment we have such a large selection of protocols to choose from that I couldn't see anything that made Wave stand out as being 'the one'. Now Microsoft has a new product or service called Hohm. So far I've seen a lot of marketing information and people saying how

IPV6 is coming, IPV6 is coming!

2009-06-21T14:20:00.001-04:00

Recently Comcast announced that they will embrace IPV6. While they are just trialing this through 2010 eventually it will become the standard method to access the internet. As it currently stands we'll still be able to get to IPV4 addresses that already exist (probably through dual IP network stacks). My concern is for the day when Comcast will no longer give me an IPV4 address at my firewall.

Pretty good weekend!

2009-04-27T09:03:00.001-04:00

This past weekend was the Trenton Computer Festival. Unfortunately the economy sucks and very few vendors came out. Even the 'junk yard' was smaller than in years past. There was a few things that I found that I was happy with. First I picked up a Heathkit Microcontroller Learning System (it has the Motorola 6808 on it). It still works, not bad for $10. Then there was the Netgear WGT624-V3 (

Benjamin Franklin one of the founding father's of open source? ;-)

2009-04-22T01:09:00.001-04:00

Around 1742 Benjamin Franklin improved on the existing design and manufacturing of cast iron stoves. Instead of patenting his ideas he placed them in the public domain. In his Autobiography his preference in such matters: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and

Netbooks

2009-04-15T17:54:00.000-04:00

I told Juha (from OpenRemote) I was looking at Netbooks and that I had become particularly interested in the Samsung NC20 Netbook. The price ($550 US) is a bit steep as you can purchase a normal laptop for the same amount (Hmm). Anyway it has a good screen 1280x800 and it's only a little smaller than the IBM T43 I use for work, which I'm very comfortable with. It looks like the US battery (

My Bol-Bot (robot) has arrived!

2009-04-04T14:50:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was one of my better days. I worked from home in the morning attempting to get some required training done for work. The training required the use of a joystick to complete various tasks. It's really a neat training package but unfortunately, as usual, I found some rather interesting bugs. In several spots I could get the software into a deadlock. To finish task A you had to do task B

Updated OpenRemote

2009-03-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

First, Happy St. Patrick's day! :-) For the past few months it's looked like OpenRemote hasn't been doing much. Quite the contrary! I know that Marc Fleury and Juha Lindsfor have been quite busy and they're about to show off their work. If you visit the site you will see a major update to the site. Also there is going to be some photos and descriptions of some of the tools and software to be

Morning mish-mash (miscellaneous madness/mutterings)

2009-03-11T11:10:00.001-04:00

I've been busy with the usual and I haven't been able to get out my 'misc. mutterings'. First I'm very happy to see that the OpenRemote folks are busy. They've actually been very quiet but busy behind the scenes. There's no w new site (note to self update link on LinuxHA). I was starting to get worried with the long period of quiet. At the moment I am frustrated as I don't understand what is

My head is spinning!

2009-02-19T18:23:00.002-05:00

Well I guess I over did it! During December I put in a marathon effort to catch up with my studies (I'm working on a BS degree). Then I proceeded to take on some MIT EE online courses. Meanwhile at work I was working on 120 hours of course material also. Well it's finally catching up with me. I'm feeling a little burned out. The good news is that I can slow down, take it easy and I'll recover.

U-verse

2009-02-15T13:31:00.001-05:00

Note: First let me say that I am an AT&T employee so take this review with that in mind. Also I am expressing my personal opinion and I am not representing my employer. Last week I attended some AT&T U-verse installation training (here's a Wiki entry). Still I really want this service. :-) We got some time to play with the service and the middle U-verse package (U200). I had a lot of fun with

Google your energy usage?

2009-02-11T11:47:00.003-05:00

Note: I've also posted this to the Open Remote forums so some of you are seeing this twice. Here's something I just read with interest and fear; Google and energy information (Google's Powermeter). The news industry is calling it Google and Smart Grids. I haven't seen the hardware yet and I'm trying to find out what the details are but it looks like the smart grid will provide us with ways to

I love Open Source!

2009-01-29T23:23:00.001-05:00

I'm currently working on a bicycle route time planner. It uses Javascript and it's difficult to learn and program the page with the options I want at the same time (I didn't know Javascript before this). So it was very nice to come across and Javascript interpreter called SpiderMonkey Javascript engine. I downloaded it, compiled and I've been using it to write Javascript code that is used on my

Oops, wrong blog

2009-01-25T18:58:00.002-05:00

Dang, posted the blog entry to the wrong blog. I meant to post to my General Fluff blog something about the new light set I'm using. At the moment I'm tied up with the normal daily minutia, school (this and one more semester), work, family and my hobbies. At the moment I'm looking into getting a Bluetooth adapter for one of my micro-controllers. I haven't had a chance to put the One-Net boards

Open Courseware and Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T11:28:00.001-05:00

As Jon Smirl was kind enough to point out (thanks Jon) MIT's Open Courseware is a great way to advance your knowledge. So far I've taken the Introduction to Computer Science and Programming (6.00) course (Python) and I'm taking the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (6.001) course (Scheme). Both of these courses are prerequisites for other courses. I can say that I haven't taken

School la la la ...

2008-12-28T13:07:00.001-05:00

I just finished off my classes for the semester and I only have 4 more classes before I get my Bachelor of Science (BS) degree, yeah!. That's two more semesters, so I should be done by September if outside factors (a story for another day) don't interfere. Already I'm investigating getting a master's degree (I must be nuts). I have to figure out finances, reviewing and taking the GRE, what I

Diary of a Future-Home owner

2008-12-20T13:53:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago Jack Ganssle, in his news letter: The Embedded Muse (issue 170) found something I had been looking for but couldn't remember enough details to find. A particular humorous, but fictious, HA story that I read in 1996. Twelve years ago Christina Vasilakis wrote her Fine Arts master's thesis on House of the Future. This would seem an odd combination, Fine Arts and the topic of

Smart Homes and the TV show "Wife Swap"

2008-12-18T19:34:00.001-05:00

Because I was busy with school I couldn't post this topic until now. During the summer I received an interesting email from a Casting Producer for ABC's "Wife Swap", her name is Gaby. Gaby was "... casting our fifth season at the moment and we're looking for one-of-a-kind families with plenty of personality. This season, we would love to feature a family that lives in a smart house! It would be

Asus EEE B202

2008-12-16T23:49:00.002-05:00

Marc Fleury (of Jboss and now OpenRemote fame) was kind enough to get my hands on a Asus EEE (model B202). So I spent part of the day trying things out. This usually means experimentation and doing things the hard ways. This turns out to be the easiest way to learn anything! Well today I learned all sorts of stuff! ;-) First this computer is pretty small. It's about the size of my O'Reilly Perl

Wile E. Coyote, Photo(?) Super Genius!

2008-12-15T11:58:00.001-05:00

... Super Genius, I like the way that sounds (Wile E. Coyote - Warner Brothers Cartoons) I just saw this while poking around on the internet. It's up on ThinkGeek and it seems like an interesting toy to hack. Its the Igala WiFi Linux Photoframe and at $239 (plus S&H) it's pretty expensive for a photoframe but it's not too expensive as a touchscreen. :-) I can't seem to find a size but it's an

@#$%! passwords!

2008-12-12T23:24:00.000-05:00

So I'm working on my final project for my Project Management course (the professor was kind enough to give me additional time to work). So I've spent the last two weeks reading all the chapters, studying all the material and doing the assignments. I've done quite well on my final (92 of 100 pts). I have about 5 assignments that I have almost complete. They're sitting on my work (Windows) laptop.

Yahoo! I made it!

2008-12-11T00:36:00.001-05:00

So I did it, I survived and thrived! For those who don't know, I just finished up my finals (only two more semesters, 4 more classes). So by this time next year I should have a Bachelor of Science degree. Anyway on to HA and my courses. My first course was the "Psychology of Learning". There I learned that more about machine learning. I did a journal critique on an an AI Magazine article: "Does

May you live in interesting times ...

2008-12-08T18:58:00.001-05:00

It is said that this is a Chinese curse. Whether it is or is not we're certainly in the middle of 'interesting times'. I rather think that life in general is this way and we must make the best of it. At the moment that's all I can do. Hopefully I'll be lucky. Having said that I look around and I also see the other side of the coin. Right now (2008/12/8) I'm finishing up my studies and my final

Laptop woes and a switch to KDE

2008-10-22T11:15:00.001-04:00

The fan on my Ubuntu laptop is making all sorts of noise (loud) and I fear it's not long for this earth (the fan). Since I don't really use this laptop as a portable device (just a wireless one) I think I might be able to come up with some kind of kludge or hack to keep it going. One problem I began to run into is that Gnome and it's apps are eating up my CPU (but not ram). Basically the latest

That was painful!

2008-10-12T22:16:00.001-04:00

I compiled everything I needed for MediaTomb (ffmpeg, vlc, etc). Some things were easy to compile and install. Others a little more painful. Of everything I installed, VLC was the most painful. When I visited the web site there were plenty of other packages that were mentioned so I knew I was in for a lot of work but the stuff that they didn't mention was the painful part. Things like Lua, and

Keeping up to date

2008-10-12T13:48:00.001-04:00

One of my home servers is running Fedora Core 6 (FC6). I've got it nicely setup for my specific home use (printing, file sharing, DHCP, DNS, etc). Basically a well tuned system, something that is a royal pain to upgrade. One of the problems with Fedora is that it needs to be upgraded just about every 18 months. So I decided that my next upgrade would be to CentOS. It needs to be upgraded less

MediaTomb

2008-10-10T15:06:00.001-04:00

Last week my friends and I sat down for our 'hack session' which is really nothing more than our weekly excuse to get together and tear into technology. We've been doing it since the 1980's and we've been quite creative (we're not black hats). This week it was my friend's NSLU2 and Twonky. For some odd reason the NSLU2 didn't want to start up and of course this meant that Twonky didn't start up

Mobile test message

2008-09-12T13:43:00.003-04:00

I'm typing this from my mobile phone. While I hate the keyboard itmight be useful for quick entries while I'm out roaming the world.Let'a face it, the world is moving more towards wireless everythingand while I don't see this generation of phones as being thereplacement for our desktop computers it's getting pretty dang close.Now if I only had a spell chicker. ;-)-- Linux Home Automation

In the spirit of sharing.

2008-09-07T23:14:00.002-04:00

A while ago I found I had an awful problem with exclamation points (or in Unix parlance bang or shebang) being inserted into my Blog entries at random locations. It would only happen on long Blog entries. It was maddening as I'd then have to go in and remove them by hand. It's been a problem for a number of years but I didn't know what to do to fix the problem. I tried searching for various

I'm so tired!

2008-09-07T18:05:00.002-04:00

These last few weeks off from school were supposed to be relaxing but for some odd reason they haven't been. I'm still exhausted. I have a lot of work to do there. Uhm, ah never mind. With tropical storm Hanna rolling through the area I'm stuck indoors with time on my hands. So I wrote programs. The first was a simple php redirect.php so people who get http error 404s on my web pages get a

Comcast 250GB cap

2008-08-29T21:03:00.002-04:00

Well there's a big stink about Comcast's bandwidth cap. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm pretty sure that I don't have to worry about over running the 250 GB cap. I think I normally I run around 30GB/month. It is my opinion that I'm a bandwidth-lite type of user. My usage is web page updates, email and general web usage. My understanding is that other cable providers have caps less than 50GB

New search engine? Not really ...

2008-07-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

When I hear about a new search engine I like to go and check it out to see how good it is. Today there is a new one, CNN had an article called: Ex-Googlers launch rival search engine (oh goody, a new toy to play with). Apparently Anna Patterson knows what she is doing as the last time she created such technology Google bought it. Her company is called CUIL and, using her search engine, I did my

Do we have 802.11n cards and driver for Linux?

2008-07-26T22:28:00.001-04:00

So I'm poking around Slashdot (don't we all?). And I read that "Atheros Releases Free Linux Driver For Its 802.11n Devices". Cool, finally I can get 802.11n for my home setup. So I bounce over the link provided Madwifi announcement (the Slashdot comments have the usually, rants, raves, gibberish and a few comments with useful information) and find that they even have a list with cards that are

Oops, microdrives ...

2008-07-21T14:24:00.001-04:00

When is a microdrive not an IDE/CF compatible card? When it's a Seagate ST1 (5G) with firmware 3.08 or later. Apparently these microdrives are specifically meant for use in MP3 players and some of the stuff like a partition table is not there. :-< So I now have 4 microdrives that can't be used as a hard drive in an embedded system. I guess I should have done a bit more research before I

Bluetooth to replace RS232 cables?

2008-07-21T12:11:00.001-04:00

I'm currently taking a class on Wireless protocols, very cool class. I've learned about RFID technology and how it could be the solution to programming a remote by placing the remote on a device and pushing a button. Well it's not that easy for the programmer but it is for the consumer. Of course there's some WiFi which I had more of in another class (I love taking classes where I can use what I

The problem of Linux cross compiled drivers

2008-07-21T11:10:00.001-04:00

I managed to get the cm15a driver to load on the ORC but I'm now getting the following: Jul 20 14:10:14 (none) kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver cm15a Jul 20 14:11:20 (none) kernel: usb 1-2: new low speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2 Jul 20 14:11:20 (none) kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Jul 20 14:11:20 (none) kernel: cm15a: probe of 1-2:1.0

Toys, toys, toys!

2008-07-18T13:12:00.001-04:00

This has been a very good week. First I got over my asthma, last week was lousy for me, I couldn't breath. Then a few books arrive (Java J2SE and J2ME books), then my new reference design (the ORC), then the TI RF MSP430 dev boards, then my new hard drive and today 512M of RAM and 4 - 5G microdrives. I'll use the microdrives (real hard drives) to build my new distributions on as it's less wear

Hard Drive upgrade and Gparted

2008-07-18T12:54:00.004-04:00

I spent a little time last week working with parted. Parted and Gparted, the GUI driven version of parted, is a partition editor (for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems). When I worked with parted last week it was to repartition compact flash images for use on an embedded system. I'm still not clear on how to use the CLI parted for

How do you build a bootable compact flash card?

2008-07-12T12:41:00.001-04:00

I ran into an interesting problem this week. I recently purchased an ALIX3C2 (Embedded 500 Mhz Geode Motherboard w/ USB, Serial, Mini-PCI) board for use on the OpenRemote HA project. It's not my first embedded Linux system but it's the one where I need come up with instructions for those who are not embedded systems folks. When it arrived I found that I only had 16M, 32M and 2G CF cards in my

Please allow me to introduce myself ...

2008-07-06T16:43:00.001-04:00

I'm currently involved in a few projects but none so interesting as the OpenRemote project. At the moment I'll keep mum about it as we'd like to get a little more organized before we start bragging about how we're going to conquer the world (I think we will). Needless to say, it's home automation (domotics). :-) For the benefit of those who will be working with me I'd like to create an informal

Replacing the wires ...

2008-07-06T12:48:00.001-04:00

...well, replacing most of the wires anyway. You can't replace the power wires unless they can make Tesla's work on wireless power very safe. But many of the other wires, like communication wires, are being replaced. Will this bring additional problems? Or will it be the ultimate solution? I don't know, but it's here to stay. Either way I know it will keep me employed. :-) I've been working

Trenton Computer Festival and my HA Presentation

2008-04-27T21:30:00.001-04:00

So this last Saturday was a pretty good day for the TCF. It was cloudy, around mid-60's, threatened rain and windy. But we had no rain and it really was a comfortable. The 'Junk Yard' (the place where they sell used equipment) was small and many of the vendors lamented that it wasn't as nice as it has been in the past. Some blamed the management but I blame the PC (but not as the sole culprit).

That sync'n feeling ...

2008-04-22T08:25:00.002-04:00

Finally, I have the ability to sync (at least partially) between my Pantech C810 Duo+ with my Linux server and Thunderbird. I'm using Funambol on my home automation server. So far I have the contacts syncing properly and I need to work on the calendar and tasks. I'm getting partial syncing with Calendar but nothing with tasks yet. I'm not going to sync my email as I might as well use my IP

Switching my server to CentOS

2008-03-25T21:18:00.001-04:00

I've been using Fedora Core (and Red Hat before it) on my home automation server. The one thing that I've never liked was the speed at which it was time to upgrade to the next release. By the time I had my server stable I was upgrading to the next release. The problem is not Fedora's as that is what the Fedora distribution is for. As one gentleman pointed out: for stable servers I could either

IPV6

2008-03-20T09:14:00.002-04:00

I decided it was time to sit down and start learning IPV6. And learn I did! I now have a dual stack (IPV4 and IPV6) on my network (wired and wireless). I went to Go6 and register for an IPV6 tunnel. I learned about link local addresses, site local addresses (a deprecated address), global addresses and RFC4193 addressing (kind of like RFC1918). I found this useful script for generating a valid

Windows Mobile sync's with Linux!

2008-02-21T18:00:00.002-05:00

A major battle has been fought and won today ... Okay it wasn't a major battle but one that I needed to win anyway. Today I managed to get my Pantech Duo+ to be recognized by Ubuntu and not lose my wireless connection! First I went to the Synce On Ubuntu wiki page and followed their directions for Gutsy (I recently upgraded to Gutsy from Feisty). After I followed their directions I was getting a

HA presentation to LUGIP

2008-02-15T08:52:00.002-05:00

I did my home automation presentation to LUGIP (Linux Users Group in Princeton) last night (the presentation is here). This presentation differed a bit from the previous presentation as it was more based on Linux than a general HA presentation. In my opinion it went well. It went much smoother than the previous version. There was still that one gentleman sleeping in the same chair as the

A very Busy week!

2008-01-27T16:59:00.000-05:00

This was a rather odd busy week. Classes started at Pace and I only have one this semester, "AIT381: Emerging Broadband Technologies", basically IPTV and VoIP. I am familiar with VoIP as I wrote a chapter on the subject in my book (but that doesn't mean I know a lot about it). I also have another slight advantage as I build Cisco networks to properly handle these protocols and my office-mate

Insteon coming to Europe?

2008-01-18T09:36:00.001-05:00

Automated Home.com and Smart Home Blog has a short Blog entry on Insteon coming to the UK and Europe. I think this is a big deal as this really opens up the market to a working alternative to X10 and X10 like products. I just hope Insteon get serious about fixing it problems with the developers. Insteon is driving us nuts by giving us a moving target with the availability of PC controllers and

Home Automation Presentation

2008-01-17T12:33:00.001-05:00

Recently, (Jan. 14, 2008) I presented to the PPCUG my HA presentation (found here). I think I did a pretty good job though there were a few slides I need to merge and I've decided listing the software is boring. I'll have to present working software in the next presentation (see here for a schedule). On the PPCUG presentation I only made it up to slide 54 out of 74. The rest of the slides were

Home Automation Resource management

2008-01-13T21:47:00.000-05:00

A couple of interesting articles both from the N.Y Times. The first is California Seeks Thermostat Control - the gist of the story is that the California Energy Commission wants to be able to control the temperature of your HVAC to 'manage electricity shortages'. The second article is similar but from a different point of view: Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy, Study Finds - the gist of this

Learning to program

2008-01-08T11:02:00.001-05:00

Okay so I'm a little off topic (home automation) but today Slashdot had one of it's typical rant/misrepresented articles titled: Professors Slam Java As "Damaging" To Students. Despite the fact that the title of the article misrepresented the article a number of absurd comments were made (like saying that HTML was programming, yipes! Where's my concrete clue bat!) and that this language was

I'm a happy camper!

2008-01-04T18:17:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it's the little things that make life better. Today I managed to properly setup my ISP and C development environment for my AT Mega 128 development board (under Linux of course). I ran a very simple blink the LED program. I properly set the fuses so the Mega128 was running off it's internal 1MHz RC (later I'll test the 16MHz XTAL), set the port for output and I toggled the bits on and

Neat stuff, digital picture frames

2007-12-23T19:47:00.001-05:00

Happy holidays to those that celebrate and a Happy New Year! Right now I'm a little busy with Christmas preparations, some software projects (home automation of course) and a nice little Atmel Mega128 board/JTAGICE setup I have for a HA hardware/software project I'm working on. I always have too many things to do ;-). Development under Linux, of course. Anyway besides having fun with the

Home Automation Forums

2007-11-30T23:47:00.001-05:00

As I stated in my previous Blog entry there are a number of forums for those interested in HA. I particularly like visiting Domotica Europe and Cocoontech. Domotica Europe is nice because I get to see what the folks in Europe are using. Here's the list: Domotica Europe - The rest of the world refers to home automation as Domotics or Domotica and these forums are for those who are in Europe and

Neat technology!

2007-11-29T10:13:00.001-05:00

So I'm having a very good week, I've apparently won over $90 Billion in European Lotto (from several different countries) and now that I have a home, car and wife I apparently need a big chicken (I didn't know Viagra would make chickens grow!?!). ;-) Also it seems that the Nigerian upper-class are all dieing off and leaving there money untouched. Since I have such an honest face they're asking

Busy, busy, busy!

2007-11-27T10:02:00.001-05:00

Yes, I'm busy! ;-) Right now I'm winding down to my semester finals in 2 courses (shouldn't that be winding up?). I've been asked to do presentations on Home Automation/Domotica for 3 local user groups here in NJ over the next few month and I'm hoping to also do a presentation at the Trenton Computer Festival at the College of NJ on April 25 - 27th. Right now my presentation is about 150 pages