Cosmic - The RF to PC Gateway

Put simply, I have taken the basic X10 RF controller, and abused it to my purpose, of controlling the house.

In essence I have a PalmPad Hand Held Remote Control which sends RF signals to the X10 RF Receiver, which in turn places signals on the powerline. These signals are then picked up by the computer, and translated into instructions by the custom software, "Cosmic"

Now, because these X10 signals will also control any lights on these addresses I have split control into two. The first set of controls (1-8, on/off) control the lights, kettle, and standard appliances as normal. The second set uses address not found by any devices in my house, and are used solely by "Cosmic". There is a switch on the remote itself which I am re-appropriate for this task.



The pad is split into three main areas:

1. Common handling. Volume change, mute and pause are used so commonly, they deserve to be present in all modes.
2. Mode-specfific. The central 8 buttons.
3. Common system. These change the mode, and report on the general status of Cosmic, and the house in general.

The modes I have are:
Multimedia - CD playing, MP3 jukebox control
Timer - Start a timer for 5 minutes, and the voice will remind you at the appropriate time. Very useful since it can be used from the kitchen, with the audio pumped downstairs through the house wiring looms.
News - Basic status information, such as weather, news, and calendar events.

The functionality is then handled by a number of small scripts on the machine itself, executed whenever the appropriate X10 signal is heard on the powerline. The current version is temporarily held as Cosmic handler script but a formal release will be available later. The configuration, fwiw, is done simply by adding lines to /etc/heyu/x10.conf

SCRIPT e1 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/mixer dec master 10
SCRIPT e1 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/mixer inc master 10
SCRIPT e2 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/mixer toggle
SCRIPT e2 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/pmedia
SCRIPT e7 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic modestatus
SCRIPT e7 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic nextmode
SCRIPT e8 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/status
SCRIPT e8 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic root

# real cosmic handlers
SCRIPT e3 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e3off
SCRIPT e3 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e3on
SCRIPT e4 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e4off
SCRIPT e4 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e4on
SCRIPT e5 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e5off
SCRIPT e5 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e5on
SCRIPT e6 off :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e6off
SCRIPT e6 on :: /usr/local/minerva/bin/cosmic e6on