HASystem 1.0 – What can it do?
Its been a while since I last wrote about the home automation system I’m working on with Andrew, in fact its been about 3 months. In that time we have both finished University and started jobs but work on HASystem has continued be it a little rocky at times but that has not stopped us from creating version 1.0 of HASystem. Its taken a completely different shape to that of what we spoke about with in the article on automatedhome.co.uk and in 1.0 a lot of things have been redesigned which has resulted in the server now being a GUI application this has changed the working model of the system, previously this was a Server-Client with sub-clients model now the system is more of a Server-Subclients model due to the administration of the system from the client moved to directly on the server, this has allowed Andy to incorporate Plugin functionality which allows us to easily extend the system further. so here is a quick break down of main changes and additions;
HAServer
- GUI Application rather than a console / service application
- Supports plugins
- Supports JSON-RPC
- Schedule Tasks
- Event triggered Tasks
Feel free to join our Google Group.
Google Group : https://groups.google.com/group/hasystem?hl=en-GB
Updates – Home Automation App & Uni
So its been a while internet, I’ve been a little lazy on the blog posting front but I’ve had University to finish! Although its not over yet the end is in sight in just under 5 days! Its not really been a stressed couple of months but it has been busy, although looking back I’ve had plenty on time for chilling out, so maybe not as busy as you think, but it has been busy enough not to post any commits to the Home Automation project I’ve been working on with Andrew… That has changed over the last couple of days and I’ve finally got the HA Windows Phone 7 client to a standard which I like, its been half done for a while now! So I guess that really does mark the end of university now that I have time for awesome projects again!
The client for HA has really got me in to programming for the platform, I’m no epic programmer but I can see myself writing a few public apps if and when I come up with some ideas! Although Matt has recently got an Android phone it really has woken me up to the fact WP7 is still limited on the App front from the major players etc, for example Sky News, that is probably the one app I miss the most on the iPhone. It really did keep me up to date on the world outside of student life! I’m not going to bail just yet though on WP7 I’m sure they’ll be working on it, if not they hopefully will start soon!
So what’s changed in the Home Automation Project…
The task list now includes saved tasks, they are a list of tasks or other non-script tasks, for example uTorrent, you can access the uTorrent API via HA.
Never bothered implementing the Wake On Lan support for the client. As I now have a new Asrock HTPC on the way I thought I best get it done soon! Also properly implemented the settings and application menu bar!
Now to put my new found skills too making an app to put on the market place!
Home Automation System
I’ve hinted at this a few times, namely Windows Phone 7 App – HAWP7, so I thought I’d actually tell you what is it.
HA or Home Automation System is a result from visiting this site and wanting a similar sort of system. For a while now I’ve considering doing something like this but never actually getting around to it mainly because of University and moving house every year.
So I started writing a program. This was about a month ago when I should have been doing my Final Year Project but lets forget about that for now. HA started out simply doing stuff I was going via RDP on my Windows Home Server which included executing various scripts to sort TV Shows and backup websites/work/svn etc.
HA is a server and client application where the server does all the work. The client is just a client and tells the server what to do. This was loosely based on two year old piece of work called MD5 Cracker, that was an assignment and was a distributed system to cracking an MD5 hash, I pretty much just copied the network code and updated it to use JSON although it wasn’t the best it worked! This is when Andrew got on board and its become a joint project between us. Andy is doing a programming degree and is probably the cleverest person I know. It has worked some magic and made everything all cool and stuff!
So here is what HA is at the moment!
HAServer
Running on the Windows Home Server HAServer is headless and currently does the following
- Runs tasks and scripts on the server
- Directly controls X10 devices via a CM11u and keeps track of states
- Wakes sleeping computers via WOL
- Some interfacing with XBMC
- Communication via HTTP and TCP using JSON.
Being a month old the system is quite limited in features but we have big plans!
HAClient
HAClient is the main client and control interface for HAServer, its got the following features
- Setup-less (It gets the HAServer IP via broadcast)
- Configures settings on HAServer
- Fully supports all features on the HAServer
- Displays XBMC information and provides audio controls
- Able to switch x10 devices on and off
HAWP7
Since getting a developer unlock for my phone I been working on my client for my HTC HD7 Windows Phone Device. It currently support X10 via the HTTP API
HAAndroid
Andy has a Nexus One and wrote a client for it..
Still pretty early days but there you go, I’ll try to keep the site updated with its progress.. In the mean time here is an awesome picture Matt took with this new camera.
Update: HASystem got featured in this months “My Automated Home” over at automatedhome.co.uk : My Automated Home: Tom Lawrence – Home Brew X10 Plus XMBC Control
Windows Phone 7 App – HAWP7
Its not taken long but I’ve written my first app, called at the moment a very boring name of HAWP7 the app allows me to turn on or off lights in my house.. It is actually is part of a wider system that I am working on which is being called HA (my creative name thinking skills need working on). HA or Home Automation System is program I am working on with Andy over at A-Jackson.co.uk. The idea is that HA will be able to control all aspects of home automation in our homes, currently still in the early days we have been developing it along side our final year projects, at times its taken over as it seems much more interesting than our projects do.
So having just got a Windows Phone I’d thought I’d write a client to interface with the HA Server I have running on my WHS, so after a little coding help as I’m not a programmer but seem to be getting quite good I came up with this.. A client that allows me to turn on or off all the x10 devices I have, which isn’t many to be honest but I’ve nabbed some more of ebay! The app shows via the light bulb image what lights are currently on and once pressed the devices are turned off via HAServer on the WHS and the list of devices updated.
My First App – HideMediaFiles
I wrote a small app, not at app as such but more of a little tool for my Windows Home Sever. I suppose its not my first app as well as I have written apps for University but this is the first one I’ve written that I didn’t have to write.
HideMediaFiles is a small tool to hide all the media information in your media directory, all those fanart images and nfo’s. If your like me when you go directly to the folder it annoys you because its filled with lots of useful but annoying to look at files.
So anyway more info and a download link can be found over at the new App page! Here
TVSorter
Andrew has released after much development a useful application called TVSorter over on Google Code. TVSorter is a little application for renaming and sorting TV Shows. You can give it a folder and it’ll work its way though it moving the episodes into a nice folder tree. It also grabs episode names from TheTVDB and includes them when renaming.
I’ve been using it for quite a while now although its taken different forms but its extremely useful for renaming TV Shows in to the correct format. It allows you to easily manage the naming structure of your TV folder which helps applications like XBMC see episodes properly which gives it a higher rate of finding episode information.
