killswtch's Home Automation and Media Projects
This is the story of my attempts at integrating various technologies into a 3-bed semi, constructing as much of the hardware and electronics as possible myself.
Saturday 29 December 2007, 9:03 PM
Completing the first phase of the MythTV setup
After finding out that the two tuner cards I already have are too large to fit in the new Camulus case of the new MythTV master backend (aka sodium), I ordered a Nova-T 500 dual-tuner PCI card. This was a little risky because Hauppauge produced a limited run of cards for the UK that are not compatible with linux. These cards are normally identified by their model number and certain stickers on the box.
When I received the card, I discovered that it bore the model number of the troublesome batch, but no extra stickers on the box or the card. I installed the card in one of the PCI slots and booted the machine. ‘ls /dev/dvb’ should have listed something, but it didn’t. At this point I got a little worried. However, I remembered that there was a link to the setup instructions on the site where I purchased the new computer.
The instructions went fine, except the wrong firmware version was listed resulting in a short time of frustration wondering why the thing wouldn’t work. Downloading the correct firmware version fixed everything, and the dual-tuners are now working away recording all the stuff we want to watch over Christmas and New Year but don’t have the time to.
So far 305GB has been recorded. There have been a few teething problems, including getting xmltv to play ball and associate itself with the channels, and occaisionally the backend will crash presumably through the stress of having so many recordings over such a busy period. The front-end is working adequately for the moment, and mythweb is currently the easiest way to schedule the recordings via the family computer. A little more time needs to be spent configuring lirc so that it can use more of the features of the MS Media Centre remote.
I have successfuly set up an mvpmc STB in the master bedroom, which is suitable for watching recordings. The DHCP and TFTP stuff has been moved back to (new) boron after fiddling about with some Ubuntu-specific differences with getting TFTP working.
Next up is getting an LCD TV for the dining room and connecting it up to what will then be a second front-end (currently the family PC, but it takes up too much space so will be replaced by a laptop). When the kitchen gets refurbished, an mvpmc STB or a low-power standard frontend will be installed and connected to a smaller LCD TV.
When I received the card, I discovered that it bore the model number of the troublesome batch, but no extra stickers on the box or the card. I installed the card in one of the PCI slots and booted the machine. ‘ls /dev/dvb’ should have listed something, but it didn’t. At this point I got a little worried. However, I remembered that there was a link to the setup instructions on the site where I purchased the new computer.
The instructions went fine, except the wrong firmware version was listed resulting in a short time of frustration wondering why the thing wouldn’t work. Downloading the correct firmware version fixed everything, and the dual-tuners are now working away recording all the stuff we want to watch over Christmas and New Year but don’t have the time to.
So far 305GB has been recorded. There have been a few teething problems, including getting xmltv to play ball and associate itself with the channels, and occaisionally the backend will crash presumably through the stress of having so many recordings over such a busy period. The front-end is working adequately for the moment, and mythweb is currently the easiest way to schedule the recordings via the family computer. A little more time needs to be spent configuring lirc so that it can use more of the features of the MS Media Centre remote.
I have successfuly set up an mvpmc STB in the master bedroom, which is suitable for watching recordings. The DHCP and TFTP stuff has been moved back to (new) boron after fiddling about with some Ubuntu-specific differences with getting TFTP working.
Next up is getting an LCD TV for the dining room and connecting it up to what will then be a second front-end (currently the family PC, but it takes up too much space so will be replaced by a laptop). When the kitchen gets refurbished, an mvpmc STB or a low-power standard frontend will be installed and connected to a smaller LCD TV.
Saturday 29 December 2007, 7:42 PM
Foaming
I received yet more odd looks and comments at work when a few weeks ago I received a delivery of 24 foam tiles. I ordered them from eBay as an experiment in trying to reduce the amount of noise eminating from the rack cabinet. At about £30 it was a bit of a gamble.
The tiles arrived packed in a tower, and were a lot lighter than I expected. I have installed sound absorption material before, inside the HTPC case that used to house boron, but that was specifically designed for noise reduction within computers. This foam was much thinner but had several layers. The bottom layer was very high density and hence quite heavy. The weight is designed to dampen vibration in whatever it’s attached to as well as absorbing sounds. The foam for the cabinet is not layered but it’s much thicker at about 4cm. One of the larger surfaces is flat and the other has an egg-crate relief pattern which apparently prevents the formation of standing waves.
The tiles are normally attached using spray-on adhesive, but to keep costs down I decided to give my glue gun a go. However, since hot-melt glue is obviously a liquid when applying, the foam tended to absorb quite a lot of it rather than presenting it to the side panels to which the foam was being attached. The solution to this was to add more glue and only press very lightly and hold until the glue had cooled. Despite this method, I managed to use up 5 or 6 sticks - my entire supply - doing both sides of the cabinet.
24 tiles turned out to be the exact amount needed. I thought I might only use about 8, but 12 on each side fitted just right. Only 2 offcuts were made as a result of having to account for the 4-way power strip mounted to one of the uprights in the cabinet.
The resulting noise reduction is better than I expected. I can now sleep at night despite the 40mm fans on the two 19″ rackmount switches whirring away. It’s far from totally silent, but the elimination of reflection of the sounds inside the cabinet has greatly reduced the amplitude of the eminating noise, which escapes from the top of the cabinet. I have attempted to add the top to the cabinet which again drastiacally reduced noise, but it caused the temperature inside to rise significantly and I discovered that the top of the cabinet is not square enough to mount the top without modification.
The tiles arrived packed in a tower, and were a lot lighter than I expected. I have installed sound absorption material before, inside the HTPC case that used to house boron, but that was specifically designed for noise reduction within computers. This foam was much thinner but had several layers. The bottom layer was very high density and hence quite heavy. The weight is designed to dampen vibration in whatever it’s attached to as well as absorbing sounds. The foam for the cabinet is not layered but it’s much thicker at about 4cm. One of the larger surfaces is flat and the other has an egg-crate relief pattern which apparently prevents the formation of standing waves.
The tiles are normally attached using spray-on adhesive, but to keep costs down I decided to give my glue gun a go. However, since hot-melt glue is obviously a liquid when applying, the foam tended to absorb quite a lot of it rather than presenting it to the side panels to which the foam was being attached. The solution to this was to add more glue and only press very lightly and hold until the glue had cooled. Despite this method, I managed to use up 5 or 6 sticks - my entire supply - doing both sides of the cabinet.
24 tiles turned out to be the exact amount needed. I thought I might only use about 8, but 12 on each side fitted just right. Only 2 offcuts were made as a result of having to account for the 4-way power strip mounted to one of the uprights in the cabinet.
The resulting noise reduction is better than I expected. I can now sleep at night despite the 40mm fans on the two 19″ rackmount switches whirring away. It’s far from totally silent, but the elimination of reflection of the sounds inside the cabinet has greatly reduced the amplitude of the eminating noise, which escapes from the top of the cabinet. I have attempted to add the top to the cabinet which again drastiacally reduced noise, but it caused the temperature inside to rise significantly and I discovered that the top of the cabinet is not square enough to mount the top without modification.
Sunday 9 December 2007, 2:51 PM
iPod remote control interface mockups
Here are some initial interface wireframes for the iPod Touch remote control. I’ve not shown all of the menus because that would be quite a bit of work. These three should give you an idea of what I intend to do though.
Main menu
The main menu summarises the major systems of the house. Clicking on one of the buttons takes you to more controls for that system. The colour of the buttons indicate the overall state of the system - green = OK, yellow = warning, red = error, grey = disabled.
Audio
The audio controls will list the 4 zones, with a drop-down menu next to each button to select the audio source. Clicking the large button switches the zone on or off. Pressing the ‘Use for all’ button copies the settings of the selected zone to all the other zones.
Security
The large buttons display a thumbnail of the live video from the cameras. Clicking on the large button will show the full video feed (resized to fit the iPod’s screen). Cameras can be disabled for privacy.
Main menu
The main menu summarises the major systems of the house. Clicking on one of the buttons takes you to more controls for that system. The colour of the buttons indicate the overall state of the system - green = OK, yellow = warning, red = error, grey = disabled.
Audio
The audio controls will list the 4 zones, with a drop-down menu next to each button to select the audio source. Clicking the large button switches the zone on or off. Pressing the ‘Use for all’ button copies the settings of the selected zone to all the other zones.
Security
The large buttons display a thumbnail of the live video from the cameras. Clicking on the large button will show the full video feed (resized to fit the iPod’s screen). Cameras can be disabled for privacy.
Saturday 8 December 2007, 11:15 PM
Sensor boxes
Whilst pondering over what sensors I could put around the house, I ventured upon the idea of having a ’sensor box’ per room. This would be based upon something like the Netiom xAP, which would connect various sensors to the house’s IP network. Some of the sensors in each room would be different. Here are some examples of the sensors that would be common to all of the rooms:
o Temperature
o PIR (motion detector)
o Door contact
o Window contacts
o Light
Room specific sensors could be:
Entrance hall:
o Current meter
o Intruder alarm status (triggered/armed)
o Door bell
Kitchen:
o Back door bolt contact
o Oven/hob state
Each of these nodes can then be queried, via the xAP protocol in this case. Temperature could be recorded, although at present our combi-boiler would probably not allow for remote control. Motion detection and door contacts can be used to determine which rooms are occupied, and along with the window sensors could be used as a secondary security system. The light sensors would be used to control the house lights.
Having one single ‘node’ to talk to would do away with having lots of independent sensors that would probably all communicate differently. Thanks to having picture rail throughout most of the house, there won’t be a problem with hiding the wiring. I’m not sure how big the boxes would be, but I dont think they would be massive. I just need to find the money to build a prototype.
o Temperature
o PIR (motion detector)
o Door contact
o Window contacts
o Light
Room specific sensors could be:
Entrance hall:
o Current meter
o Intruder alarm status (triggered/armed)
o Door bell
Kitchen:
o Back door bolt contact
o Oven/hob state
Each of these nodes can then be queried, via the xAP protocol in this case. Temperature could be recorded, although at present our combi-boiler would probably not allow for remote control. Motion detection and door contacts can be used to determine which rooms are occupied, and along with the window sensors could be used as a secondary security system. The light sensors would be used to control the house lights.
Having one single ‘node’ to talk to would do away with having lots of independent sensors that would probably all communicate differently. Thanks to having picture rail throughout most of the house, there won’t be a problem with hiding the wiring. I’m not sure how big the boxes would be, but I dont think they would be massive. I just need to find the money to build a prototype.
Saturday 8 December 2007, 10:06 PM
A video summary of some of the projects
Here's a video I've put together about some of my projects. Sorry about the wobblyness and wonkyness - I'm not sure where I've put my tripod.
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