Home Automation Recommendations for Linux? 42
Richard asks: "I am interested in starting some home automation projects. The only requirement is that it needs to be controllable via my Linux based system. A Google search for ' "home automation" linux ' returns more than 35,000 hits, including some good ones like this one, which just show how MUCH is out there. Are there any recommendations for a good controller with a serial or USB connection to the computer? What about power switches and sensors? Do I want a system that sends control signals over my house's power lines or RF? Any good software recommendations? As a first project I thought a simple controllable power switch would be fun: Then I could ssh to my home system, use the power switch to turn on a computer controlled radio (Ten-Tec RX-320) and use Speak Freely to send back the audio to my remote location. (This works now except that I don't want to leave the radio on all the time)."
I guess that would depend... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.linuxguru.be/ (Score:3, Informative)
Pierce Brosnan (Score:1)
Re:Pierce Brosnan (Score:2, Funny)
Howabout MisterHouse -- It Knows Kung-Fu (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to be a relevant, useful & worth project
Re:Howabout MisterHouse -- It Knows Kung-Fu (Score:1, Informative)
I have tried many, buit this is the one I use and like best. Plus, it is updated often (2-5 weeks between new versions) which was not the case with most others.
Some comments. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some comments. (Score:2)
Re:Some comments. (Score:2)
Re:Some comments. (Score:2)
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
Re:Some comments. (Score:2)
I think I'm mistaken about SoftVoice's stuff in regards to the Mac and Amiga not being related though. Sorry about that. Been a long time since I did Amiga stuff, and I'd completely forgotten about the SoftVoice work.
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
Re:Lip Sync???? (Score:1)
Re:Lip Sync???? (Score:1)
Re:Some comments. (Score:3, Funny)
You're no fun... You need a HAL9000 voice:
Open the garage door, HAL.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that...
Re:Some comments. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
see my other comment about MBROLA... it has lots of voices.
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
Re:Some comments. (Score:2, Interesting)
All I know is they used it to pre-record videos of a male newscaster giving announcements. The voice quality was very good, and the graphics were fairly good (facial animation looked like the Half-Life 2 videos I've seen).
Have you seen Ananova? Apparently they're using L
Re:Some comments. (Score:2, Interesting)
So far, my
Re:Some comments. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
Re:Some comments. (Score:3, Interesting)
You probably don't need a complete, general-purpose voice for home automation. Making a limited domain voice [stanford.edu] seems pretty straightforward.
But to your point about Festival - was there an easy system for making a general-purpose voice on the Amiga? There's a ton of detail in one of those files, extracted from typically pain-staking analysis. I think AT&T has a research system for analyzing h
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
That's only if we're talking about dumb home automation. What if I want it to read email headers aloud to me? Give me names of people calling my phone? Amiga did that just fine.
Amiga's voice driver was based on formant synthesis, not diphone synthesis. As a result, it might have been worse in sound quality, (it was, true) but diphone synthesis can't compare to it in flexibility. It didn't need complex voice definitions, a voice
Re:Some comments. (Score:2)
Maybe these links will help: link [cmu.edu] link [utwente.nl] link [uni-potsdam.de]
Re:Some comments. (Score:1)
'say' is also known as rsynth. I tried getting it to work. It works. I even made it compile and work (for suitably small quantities of 'work') under DJGPP+Allegro. But it is coded in a very messy manner, with sections of the code commented out for no listed reason. It is not clear how it works, using it to build upon is... well, it is for someone who knows the phonetic theory behind them better
For My Needs (Score:2)
One project I'm just starting on is a poor mans logging recorder. I want to bring in audio from two radios on the line input of the sound card, one on the left channel and one on the right. Using the record utility it should be easy to write a script to do that. But I worry that with VOX I'll miss something. I can get COR logic from the radios pretty easily but how can I get that into the computer
Re:For My Needs (Score:2)
It had a 3-d rendered animated head (reminded me of Gordon from HL2), and a very good male voice.
Re:For My Needs (Score:2)
Only disadv. I can see is it can't read text; you have to give it the phonemes you want it to say, but this means it will say exactly what you want it to (no mis-pronunciation of words not in vocabulary).
Re:For My Needs (Score:2)
OMG! I can't resist, I'm going to make it say "I surrender, poo poo".
Seriously that looks like a pretty cool project, except for the lack of a text reader. Maybe I'm too picky or too damn lazy.
802.11x Serial? (Score:1)
The other thing I'm c
Re:802.11x Serial? (Score:2)
Sure, you can legally buy or build a low-power FM audio transmitter that will go 50 feet or more. That's what most cheap "bugs" are, and you can find them for around $20, IIRC. Sound quality may not be great, but it's been a long time since I've played with one.
Best quality would probably come from an "FM Modulator" for a discman or iPod or whatever, if the rang
X10 (Score:3, Informative)
You can apparently do a whole automation/security system for under $3000... alerting you when someone enters the property, turning on lights, TV, whatever; schedule A/C,
Re:X10 (Score:1)
Re:X10 (Score:2)
X10 probably has the same problem.
I doubt they have any encryption.
I suppose you could use an isolation transformer on that electrical circuit, but they are large, heavy, expensive (unless you can get one surplus), and typically are only good for 100watt
Re:X10 (Score:2)
Home Automation solutions (Score:3, Informative)
I'm going to assume you want a simple starter solution that allows you to control an appliance (your radio), and uses a Linux box as a controller. You need at minimum two devices: A PC-to-powerline interface, and an appliance module.
For the powerline interface, pick up a CM11A [homeautomationnet.com] which interfaces with a serial port. This is one of the few X10-the-brand devices I recommend*. Other companies make far superior X10-the-protocol equipment.
For the appliance module, pick up an ApplianceLinc [smarthome.com]. You can get one with two-way communication so that you can also request a status response (on/off) if you need to know that. Believe it or not, most of the time you don't need two-way X-10, and it's better from a signal-strength standpoint to minimize the number of transmitters on a circuit.
The simplest Linux software is heyu. This is extremely easy: just ssh into your machine and type 'heyu turn radio on', where radio has been set up in heyu as an alias for X10 code A1, or whatever X10 code you configured the appliance module to be.
The reason I said "at minimum" above is that this may work, but for a truly reliable X10 infrastructure you may need additional hardware, particularly if you decide to expand your system. In this case you'd need to get a coupler (to bridge the two 110V phases in your house) or better yet an amplified coupler/repeater such as the ACT CR230 I recommend, available at Home AutomationNet [homeautomationnet.com]. There are others on that page as well. If you're not electrically inclined, there is a plug-in coupler [smarthome.com].
With the above, you're almost there. Some electrical equipment attenuates X10 signals. Some computer power supplies, laser printers, and some TVs can affect signal strength. To isolate them, you may need to use some plug-in filters such as the FilterLinc [smarthome.com] or the ACT filters on the bottom of this page. If you want to get serious about obtaining a rock-solid X10 infrastructure then you can use an ESM1 signal meter [homeautomationnet.com]. Also a new plug-in amplifier [smarthome.com] has been getting good reviews by early adopters.
* An alternative to the CM11A interface is the PowerLinc USB [smarthome.com]. Currently, the only linux support for this is in the wish project [sourceforge.net]. This project seems VERY cool. Set an X10 address by just writing to a
Hope this helps
-bp
Re:Home Automation solutions (Score:1)
heyu: http://heyu.tanj.com/heyu/ [tanj.com].
ACT filters: bottom of this page [homeautomationnet.com].
DIY-zoning on sourceforge (Score:1)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/diy-zoning/