HouseBot

Hello all,



I have recently discovered Meedio and Housebot, and am trying to decide if these are the right applications for what I am trying to achieve. I have done countless home theater and whole house audio installations using traditional A/V eq and control systems. I also am into networking and am trying to intergrate the two! Thought I would give it a shot at my own home! I currenly run a Windows 2003 Enterprise Server that has my music library on it connected to the whole house audio system. I remote desktop into the server from all over the house to control WMP 10. Ultimately, I would like to be able to use the server as my HTPC and at the same time control the whole house audio. I'm sure that housebot will have to be integrated to control all of my existing A/V eq, I also realize that two soundcards will be required. (from what I have read the only app that supports this is JRiver media center) I have PC's all over the house so the software remotes in Housebot sound great but can I use a traditional UHF remote as well? Such as a Home Theater Master mx-800? I have downloaded Meedio Pro and Housebot to play around with, but my music library is rather extensive so with the default plug-in it takes forever to scroll to what I want to listen to. Also, is the Meedio Essentials connector not provided with housebot? (It's not an option when I try to add a software device). Sorry about the long post, but I'm just another newbie (not a big fan of that word)! any information and help would be greatly appreciated!

The fact that you have PCs all over the place is ideal from a HB remote perspective. I've deployed several pen tablets running HB Remotes to do the same - controlling A/V and automation through a HB server, with IR connectivity through an ADICON Leopard. Also used for lighting control via X10 to/thru the Leopard. The fact that each remote can run its own theme means the remotes, their user interface, and functions can be unique. That is, I have one HB remote that is in the theatre and does HT stuff. Others have a different front end and control a 2nd AV system for the rest of the homestead. They all share the same HB server.

The big void you'll find is the inability to access the Meedio library and display/select tracks etc. to a HB remote. The Connector doesn't do 2 way, or at least cannot return info from the media library. What I've resorted to is using VNC (shareware terminal services) from one or two PCs to remote desktop to the HB & Meedio server to do album selection, etc. Very clunky but its the best I've been able to do. Waiting for full integration of HB and Meedio Essentials. Been waiting... Maybe someone else has a better solution.

I think that Steve has covered most of your questions.

Take a look at the following link about multiple use of winampin Housebot

PT, I could not see the link you referred to.

Ah!

Like a dummy I forgot to insert link. However below is link/reply from Yoram/yaccri.

I think there are other posts as well.









Joined: 07 May 2003

Posts: 163

Location: Tel-Aviv, Israel

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject:



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Simon,



HB supports mutiple instances of winamp. I tried it only for audio distribution.

You need multiple sound cards. Also, copy the winamp folder and assign each winamp.exe to a different sound card. Then, create two or more winamp devices in HB and assign each one to a different winamp.



Yoram

thanks everybody for the replies..... I will give winamp a try. I will let you know how it goes!

These is another solution for media for HouseBot -- coming soon!

Circe640



Come On ! You can't leave us in the dark! Give us some more info on what you are talking about.

A long while back I built a plugin for HouseBot that would store and play ripped CD albums that had been stored on disc in a fairly standard organization. Followig that, I wrote another plugin that would allow importing a DVD Profiler export file(XML) and allow you to browse your collection from within HouseBot even using thumbnail images from the DVD Profiler image directory. At the time, there was not a lot of interest.

This past Jan I got fed up with the lack of progress by Meedio and what seemed to be a too complex lashup to try to use the Meedio Media capabilities from HB.

I resurected the MoviePro plugin and started working on it to be able to automatically play ripped DVD moves from DVD Profiler from HouseBot.

About a month or so ago, I asked for a few guinea pigs to help test.

Dave Morgan has risen to the challenge and I got MoviePro up to a very stable and usable level. Dave was also interested in JukeBot , the album player and as a result I decided to integrate the two into a single plugin.



Well like most software projects, there has been considerable scope creep since then. Dave and I both have collections of LDs, SACDs, DVD-As, LPs, music playlists,etc. As a result there are now two pieces to a new plugin called MediaPro. One piece is the actual HouseBot plugin and the other is a MediaManger to manage the database that the plugin sits on. It is starting to approach and in some areas, exceed the capabilities of many of the commercial versions. At this point, there is support for DVDProfiler loaded DVD's, manually entered DVD's, LDs based on scraping LDDB, pc video files, music playlists, individual songs via virtual playlists, non-ripped CD's, manually entered SACD,DVD-A, and LP information. Support for disk changers, and so on. Media Manager V1.0 should be finished in about another two or three weeks and the MediaPro plugin about a week after that.



The DB is structured in such a way that I could also add PC games, software discs and even pictures(constrained to JPG and PNG as that is what HB can support currently) if there is interest as part of a next version after the initial release. the plugin is massive with over 50 properties to provide a high degree of flexibility in how you build your UI for it in HouseBot so it is a challenge to document but there will be good documentation to go with it when released.



jim

http://www.meedio.com/forum/about25257-0.html



Maybe this may of any help.....

Circe640



This sounds very interesting.If you need any further testers let me know.

So I've been playing with HB for about a month now and am loving it. At first I was set back by the lack fo skins, but now I understand why. I still find the skins very much tied into the theme. So even if you reskinned your theme with someone else skin, chances are you'd end up with something pretty weird.



I've got a pretty nice theme happening... Nice "wood" buttons, only a few panels so far for lights, traffic and weather. Working on the audio panel in the next couple of weeks. Traffic images comes from webcams on the way to work, and the weather comes from screen scraping the theweathernetwork.com site.



I got an old stylistic 500 off ebay for a $200 which runs the software remote no problem. It's actually pretty nice.



On the back end, I have an ADI Ocelot dishing out x10 and zoned IR to 4 stereo cheap-o amps. This way I can select the input on each amp(zone) or set a preset radio station. Ceiling speakers throughout the house even though only 4 out of twelve are currently installed.



After I'm finished with the audio pane I'll either embark upon the playlist stuff (circe640 it sounds like your stuff help!!!) or work on an ascii interface into my caddx alarm system.



So hopefully in writing about what I'm doing, it should help you in knowing what HB can do.



Tim

circe640, I'm interested in what you and Dave have cooked up. I was using Jukebot for awhile but switched to Meedio Essentials when I foolishly thought that Meedio was planning on integrating Essentials and HB during my lifetime. Then we got "the Connector". sigh...

Anyway, I found that Jukebot overwhelmed one of my pentablets (not enough HP; too much panel data). And I was looking for a few features it didnt have. Currently accessing Meedio Essentials using Windows Remote Desktop/terminal services (mstsc.exe client on the remotes; XP Pro on the HB server). That said, I'm willing to try anything new. Been Through CDJ, Jukebot, Essentials... I only need access to audio media (WMA's) on the HB server. So let us know when you're ready to go public.

Sent you a PM but did not hear back --- tell me what features you would like to see. Prelim testing of the DB maintenance program is just about complete and I am in the final revision stage for the actual plugin. The way it is now designed, adding new functionality should not be too difficult but I need to know what people would like to have

Jim