HouseBot

Hi everyone, This is my first post and I am hoping you may be able to tell me if my plan for housebot is viable before I purchase it,

My set up consists of a plasma screen, HTPC running windows MCE 2005 and a Onkyo amp (with 2 zones of sound) in my living room - zone 2 of the amp and a 2nd VGA output from the HTPC run a Barco 701 crt PJ and surround in a cinema room.

I have a 2nd pc with 1Tb of storage on it networked to the HTPC

I also have a PC X10 controller which can be connected by serial to either pc and X10 operated lights in the living room, cinema room and garden.

I hope to control all of this using "housebot" installed on one of the PCs in conjunction with a windows CE powered "Siemens Simpad" tablet pc.

My main questions are,

1) Can Housebot run in the background on my MCE pc which is always on without affecting use of the pc for TV/DVD etc etc

2) Can I then control everything via the simpad as a "remote client" to the Housebot software ?

3) All of the equipment appears to have "RS 232" ports on them (although I have no expirience of using this), can I control everything by this instead of by infared and if so what would i need to purchase as I only have one port on either of the PCs

4) Can I have different screen on the simpad for different locations around the house, ie one for garden lights, one for living room and 1 for cinema ?

Sorry for all the questions as im sure some are newbie errors, any responses or suggestions on a better way to control things would be great

1) Yep... HB server does not have to be in the foreground to be running. It will happily sit there in the background doing it's thing, executing tasks, sending x10 and talking to the remotes.

2) Yes... You should be able to load the HB Software Remote client onto the simpad. I have never used this in my system, but I did manage to load the client onto an older Dell Axim, but ran into WEP trouble which is why I don't use it.

3) You would probably need to by some form of RS232 expansion for your PC. They make USB => serial devices of at least 8 ports. You would then setup a generic serial device for each port and what it is connected too. You would need to hunt down the protocol for your devices and program it into HB. The protocols are usually fairly simple.

4) Yes. You need to design different Themes in HB. When you load the remote software on your simpads, you tell it which theme to use.


Not sure about the x10 controller you have. If it's something not supported by HB, it might be worthwhile changing it for something supported by HB instead of trying to write the protocol for it in HB.

The cool thing about your setup is that you could make a mega remote to display on your big screens. So you get up in the morning and you've got the news, traffic, weather, etc all on a single big screen easy to read. Or make a huge movie selector on your projection screen! Instead of using a small simpad to control your big screen, use the big screen itself with wireless keyboard. Or use the simpad as a remote, but have the results display on the big screen.

I could think of all sorts of nifty ideas to do with a setup like that.

Tim

Hi and thank you for your response, the X10 controller is called the "CM12U" and is the same as this one, http://www.keene.co.uk/pages/cat/19hom/19F.html

How can I find out if this is supported ?

I have a few more questions if you would be good enough/able to answer,

1) could you possibly point me in the direction of some sort of RS232 expansion box as to be honest I am not entirely sure what I am looking for

2) How/where would you think I can find out if my kit is controllable by RS232 prior to buying this RS232 expansion box ? I suppose I could email the producers directly but wondered if there is any site that may help (kind of like remotecentral.com but for RS232)

Thanks again for your help

Oh, sorry I have one more question if anyone can help?

How should i control Media Center (MCE 2005) on the HTPC as the same machine will be running Housebot in the background ?

Hope that makes sense

@newstuart:
Which Onkyo do you have?
I own the 5000E equivalent to the US model NR1000. I have a script that takes care of all protocol there is to have. All serial commands are scripted and with a proper null device you can have status of all features in your theme.

If the CM12A works with HouseBot (read the help?), setting up lights won't be difficult.

Usually a PC has one or two serial ports. I bought a simple RS232 expansion board (about 20 dollars orso) which increased my com ports from 2 to 4. I am thinking of expanding further with 6 or 8 extra ports. I also have USB -> Serial cables in use, but after unplugging those, they loose their COM assignment and HouseBot would be looking at the wrong port after reconnection. It is better to have true serial com ports.

http://www.superlogics.com/sl_products.asp?cat=44

In stead of MCE I use Meedio Essentials and have it fully integrated in HouseBot. I am not sure if or how you can do this with MCE, but if you purchase the USB UIRT, you could emulate control using IR codes.

I would also always control my AV and Home control stuff using some sort of simpad (Paceblade P120). With it, you can select your movies while watching TV or doing something else. There is no need to have the GUI of the Media Module on the plasma if you can have it close by on your lap. Also you could watch the weather, select music or switch on lights and your Onkyo without having to switch on the plasma or beamer first.

Hi and thanks for the response, I have just encountered my 1st potential problem, The Onkyo amp (model TS-DX 595 by the way) does not have RS232 as I thought it did (I changed amps recently and the old one had it ) so i guess control will be via infa red although the amp does have a phono socket titled remote control on the back if i can do anything with this ?

Good news about the X10 controller, I have just found the help section and will have a read now

thanks again

Can anyone point me in the direction of where to buy Meedio Essentials as the medio site i find tells me its been sold but I can not find it anywhere.

Is there any discount packages if i buy Medio Essentials and Housebot

Thinking it may be easier/better than getting to work with MCE

Please read the forum posts @ http://www.meedio.com and hunt for version 1.41
Meedio Essentials became freeware after the technology was sold to Yahoo. On the forum there are enough posts which contain links to downloading 1.41

You can buy HouseBot here and since the two are not together anymore all combined package deals are off.

Hi Richard,

I have dowloaded Medio essentials and am setting it up to compare to MCE 2005, One question I have is when you say you have housebot fully configured for medio essentials what do you mean ? My aim would be to have medio essentials and housebot installed on the same pc and to be able to control medio essentials via my simpad being used as a "software" remote, what would be the best way of achieving this ?

I mean I can fully control Meedio from using my HouseBot SWRemote. This includes database sharing, feed back through messages from Meedio and control. Using the HouseBot connector you can control Meedio by creating jumppoints to hop through the Meedio menu structure and setup all commands like Play, pause etc etc etc.
On top of that I created some database and message sharing scripts that enable me to select movies or music from meedio's database with all its info, control it (play, stop etc) and get feedback from it (like playtime from a music track, what's on the queue etc)
Please don't be fooled with all of this since it took me a good two years and very many hours to set it all up and get some understanding of what needed to be done.
If you are new to both packages, combining the two is a little bit too advanced I would say. First figure out how to set up Meedio and get it to run you want it to, then setup HouseBot the way you want it to, then install the Meedio/HouseBot connector and set it up and then expand with other things.

thankyou for your response, I agree that it may be a little ambitious at present and will do as you say and get them both running as intended first then intergrate the two after