Experiments + Gadgets

I am currently working on a number of experiments. Many of these are based around my dream of home automation.

Finally moved from our old house (see a Virtual Tour to see it as it we left it).

Different moods can be set in the living room such as movie mood, music mood, party mood and romantic mood :-). You can select music from an onscreen menu), or watch an on demand movie - all other lights go out (garden, kitchen,dining room), living room lights dim, the curtains shut and the fluorescent blue light comes on (tasteful ;-).

The PBL System has events for Motion sensors at the front door to detect when you arrive and set music and lighting depending on various factors such as time of day and the weather. There are also event handlers for the phone ringing or a radio frequency keyfob being pressed.

The system can be controlled via the Internet, a WAP phone or directly using a Radio Frequency Remote Control. This is enabled through services such as NTLs Broadband Internet Access, DNS2GO allowing dynamically allocated IP addresses to be mapped onto a common web address and finally a custom application using IIS, MSMQ and Microsoft .NET runtime to provide the link to X10 (now uses my Powered By Laziness software.

The interface is shown on the PC, TV in the lounge and a Kenwood LCD display. See the music selection interface.

Using Microsoft .NET, I have created a serial interface to the CM12U that can respond to X10 events. Handlers can listen for these events to subsequently perform actions such as sending MSN Messenger messages. Couple that with the RF PIR - MS13E "Hawkeye" and you can trigger music, lights, messages, SMS and email based on motion.

I had previously developed an XML macro language to control MP3s, X10 devices, shell commands (which can be triggered via webpage links or X10 events).

• Sample macro file
• Macro file DTD

In the dining room is a microphone and an audio lead connecting the stereo to the PC. The microphone allows voice recognition using IBMs ViaVoice software and the AlphaWorks Java API. It is possible to run macros using predefined phrases.

The ViaVoice product seems to perform well even though I only trained it for 15 minutes (it recommends nearer 2 hours). However speech recognition in general has issues. For a start the room needs to be quiet so once an MP3 is playing on the stereo, voice recognition cannot stop it! I've heard rumours of speech recognition software "subtracting" the sound from the soundcard before analysis but as far as I'm aware the version of ViaVoice that I'm using does not do this. Having said that, when it works - it works well but on a day-to-day basis the Marmitek X10 mouse remote is better.

Macros can also be initiated using the X10 MouseRemote. I plan to use Max10 Open Source software. I've previously looked at Jesse Peterson's X10 CM11A/CM17A Library which is a good library if you plan to develop using Java.

More recently, the voice recognition functionality was enhanced to extract news headlines from the BBC site and read them out through the dining room stereo. This requires a keen ear to make them out though.

Using a Matrox G550, the PC can output to two displays using independent refresh rates. However many of today's Graphics cards now support independent referesh rates (something that many NVIDIA cards didn't used to be able to do). The second display can either be a monitor or a TV - I have actually plugged it into a DigiSender box which is able to broadcast the image to two other TVs in the house. This worked fine but sometimes windows would appear on the wrong display and I would have to go to the TV to get the window back! Windows XP has now resolved many of these issues.

The downstairs toilet is fully equipped with magazine rack and toilet roll holder with built in radio and emergency out-of-paper alarm