HouseBot

I have been using Housebot for almost a year now. I think it has the potential to be the leader in home automation software. Except for on thing, no one at meedio seems to care. Come on guys! Show us you are fixing bugs, adding plug-ins, creating button librarys, anything! How bout Insteon support. You can see a growing discontent in the Housebot forums. I'am not the only one getting frustrated.



That being said, I thought I would share some screenshots of my setup. The buttons are from a guy named neil watts who posted them at remotecentral.com. It was easer than I thought to convert the pronto buttons to Housebot buttons using Photoshop. It's no work of art, but better than the default buttons Housebot gives you.



Thanks



(If the images look jagged, right click the link and download, or have IE show the full image)



http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot1.bmp

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot2.bmp

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot3.bmp

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot4.bmp

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot5.bmp

Nice screenshots but could you convert them from BMP to JPG or something? This would reduce the file size from 2.3 Mb to less than 100 Kb reducing the download time. I was wondering why it took it so long to display the screenshots.



Nosmo king

Here is the screenshots as jpg, much smaller files.



http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot1.jpg

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot2.jpg

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot3.jpg

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot4.jpg

http://www.kltechconsulting.com/Bryan/screenshot5.jpg

Download zip file below.

Contains sub folders so you may want to retain folder structure when unzipping.

Includes screen shots of my main SWRemote plus the backgrounds, buttons and tv logo's. Includes screens for lighting, audio visual, heating and security.



Nothing too fancy but may save some users time.

All buttons are in the format containing the not pressed and pressed images on each half of the image file.



http://housebot.auswide.net.au/housebot.zip



Send me an e-mail or PM if I can be of any help.

@Derek,



Nice looking theme with nice buttons. I could use some of the buttons in my own theme if the background would have been transparant.

Any chance you have these same buttons with a transparant background?



Thnx,



Richard

[quote="Richard Naninck

Any chance you have these same buttons with a transparant background?



[/quote]



Sorry Richard. I only have them on the background.

I agree. How about some Insteon support.

Here are my screenshots:



http://www.dlmorgan.org/hb-screenshots.zip



All of my panels are currently made using the stock HB buttons (except that I created a few similar buttons in other colors). As such they aren't anything spectacular graphically speaking but I've implemented a number of functions that I really like. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.



-- Dave

Here are mine. Hope you like it. I am using Housebot for full Home Automation, Media Manager and Home Security. I used some tricks to integrate Housebot and Meedio Essentials at some level.



Victor



http://homepage.mac.com/victormcruz/PhotoAlbum2.html

Thanks for posting your screenshots, they are a great way to get ideas for HB. Hey vcruz77, do you think you could give some some more info on how you wrapped HB around Meedio Essentials?





Bryan

@vcruz77



Your screenshots look really good and interesting, especially how you integrated Housebot and Essential. It would be great if you could share the "tricks" you mentioned or even some code if possible.



If anybody else has done something similar, could you please share this because I would like to achieve this as well.



Thank you very much



Stefan

The trick to "integrate" Essentials and Housebot is relatively easy.



1. Create a Panel in Housebot with a transparent square in its Backgroung Picture. The size of this area will be the size of the Essentials Window so make one with enough pixels (600 * 480 should be good enough) If you have used the transparency feature in Housebot you know that you can operate any program running behind the transparent space.



2. Lets say that the transparent square is 600 * 480 and the first pixel (top left) of the square is located in coordinate 200,200 of your panel. You have to open the Essentials Configuration and go to the General Settings Tab. There you can define how big the Essentials screen will be and the coordinate that it will show it. Following the example below you will set the top coordinate to 200, 200 and then the size of the window will extend to coordinates 800 (600 + 200) and 680 (200 + 480). With this step you should have Essentials running inside the housebot transparent space.



3. Next you will have to go to the folder of the Essentials Theme you are using (example "Blue"). There you will modify the backgroung picture and will make sure that the background have the same color as the housebot panel you have set. This will make the impression that the two applications are one since they will blend by using the same backgroung color.



4. Since you have shrunk the Essentials Windows you can go to the same theme folder the background is and there is a file that contains the FONT settings. You can easily open it and change the Font size until you are satisfied with the look.



5. Last, set the Housebot remote panel to "stay always on top".



Hope it helps,



Victor