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Home Network & Appliance
While trying to obtain some i-openers the idea arose building a thin-client (alike to an i-appliance-machine) with 'off-the-shelf' components in order to build a home-network.
This undertake was price-wise successful, but quite an overhead when trying to reduce noise (fanless) and finding cases and move the power-supply into the small case. For this reason focused more on the software side and using refurbished I-Openers, Stylistic-1000 (b/w & pen) and 1200 (color & mic) pen-computers as terminals for every room.
(click on graphic to enlarge)The main setup:
- Server: runs web-server, connection to Internet and all the memory and cpu intensive stuff
- Terminals: just displaying a desktop (using vnc)
- X-10 devices
- and misc items (see graphic for details)
HomeAppliance applications, the general setup is a general-purpose machine as mentioned above, average cost ~$320 (without disk, without monitor)
Media Following additional parts are required: with following software-components:
- DVD-ROM drive (either on the client or using the drive from the server)
- PC-TV & Radio card (such as Miro PC-TV)
- IDE Hard-Disk (min. 40GB); to record video (won't do this over ethernet)
- LCD Screen
- IR receiver; to control the client remotely (no keyboard) with any IR remote-control (skipping video- or music-titles, volume etc)
This would combine TV, video-recorder, radio, CD-player, MP3 player and book into one device, and this even networked which would imply all functionality would be available on all other devices (streaming video via ethernet might become bottle-neck though).
- MPEG I/II: watching & recording TV program; using MP1E (GPL software-only MPEG en/decoder)
- MP3: listening & recording Radio, Audio- or MP3-CDs; XAudio.Com
- DVD: watching & store DVDs (LinuxTV), using something like DeCSS
- Nice themeable UI controllable via any IR remote-control (no keyboard as mentioned)
See implemenation at Media Client.
Phone It is used to connect to the phone-line and pick-up the line and use voice-synthesizer to give message, and record voice-mail using Line-In, and speaking via Line-Out. It would replace an ordinary answering-machine. Easiest approach would be attaching 'Voice-modem' to the serial-port, simple keyboard.
LinuxTelephony.Com Resources & articles HowTo: Modem First steps
X10 Controlling lights (incl. dimming) and turning on/off other electronic devices
X10.Com Shopping X10 products Linux Home Automation Lot of links and infos, very recommended BottleRocket Home Automation Software for the X10 FireCracker kit WeedTech.Com I/O boards (serial interface) MircoMint: Plix Parallel & serial interface to switch devices
Book It most likely will be part of Media, but for now it will considered as separate client. Ability to read books, txt, html, pdf; a web-browser + pdf-reader plugin. This client may come with a LCD, and touchscreen capability; also text-to-speech interface (automatic reading of literature).
Online Books U. Penn Univ. 10,000 searchable online books (html & pdf) Abika.Com Free pdf books
Client Implementation see General Client.
- Microphone
- Loudspeaker
- Voice-recognition (e.g. ViaVoice)
- IR receivers (e.g. so all functions are controllable by IR remote-control)
- Options: IR keyboard, small LCD screen (e.g. 10")
- Apps: personal diary, calendar (input via voice) (no keyboard)
Art It has a LCD projector (still expensive, ~$6000) displaying artwork on the wall (or an empty picture frame). Via the server your prefered artwork would be displayed on the wall (e.g. entire collection whereas each picture is displayed for 20mins or so). The Art Client will be implemented within the Media Client.
Here a few details about setup of special dedicated machines (PC-based):
General Client Details about putting together a client with off-the-shell component Media Client Details on the Media Aside the terminals which runs svncviewer and operate as intelligent "switches" which allow to access literally every single device in the house.
Right now we have started to implement HNCC (HomeNetwork Communication Center) which is a perl-script (a bunch of modules) which allow control of the services we like to run. All terminals access a vncserver running on the server, this way no X11 needs to be installed on the terminals, and the ability to have a shared desktop among all terminals.
The details (e.g. sources) of the package we working on will be posted later here and likely be announced on the net. We plan to bring this project on a level of "proof-of-concept" and then look for partners to market the setup.
Server The server also operates as gateway and may be connected via leased or dial-up to the Internet, configure server with IP-masquarading (*BSD and different Linux-dist deal with this differently via ipmasqadmin / ipchain / ipfwadm etc.)
Clients For now all machines have static IP (192.168.0.x) and /etc/hosts contains all local machines on each client (we will run DNS also, but not for now). Additionally we route Internet packets to the server (gateway), for simplicity we set this by ifconfig direct.
Sound For the sound we consider Esound as best solution. This allows to play from any of clients or server(s), and listen on any other client or server. See more info at Media Client.
Video Streaming video without compression might overload the 10/100 ethernet, if video is streamed over ethernet then with less than 10Mbit/s so other apps still can use 90% of the rest of the bandwidth (assuming all use 100Mbit/s), MPEG-I might be most suitable. See more info at Media Client.
3Com: Introduction to Home Networking White Paper on home-networking (recommended)
Home Automation Index Great Overview with tons of links HomeToys.Com: HTNEWS Site with overview of gadgets MisterHouse.Net The home-automation project Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) Diskless clients in a network HowTo: Diskless Booting linux diskless CAJUN: MP3 Good related infos X10.Com Wire the house IntelliHome.Be European site to get X10 stuff HomeAutomation Our section Netpliance: Pilot-100 I-opener Pilot-100 program The people in the commitees:
OSGI.Org Standards over standards Bluetooth.Com More standards
Often 2nd or even 3rd generation computer parts (CPU, motherboard etc) are sufficient to build a thin-client, here some links:
CompGeeks.Com Discounter for computer parts ComputerSurPlusOutlet.Com Liquadation items and parts useful to find small HDs
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