xPL Plugin for Event Ghost

I just threw together an xPL plugin for Event Ghost in a couple days. It allows you to add macros in EG that respond to xPL events and to send xPL messages in response to other events. I'm not a Python coder by any stretch, but I can hack my way through enough of it to be dangerous. Therefore, don't expect the code to be that great or readable.

Here's a couple of screenshots of it in action:



This one shows an event generated by the plugin. The format of the event is:
xPL.<message identifier>:<schema>:<source>:<target>:<xPL message body>

Obviously, you'll get billions of different events so that may make it more difficult to deal with on the EG side as there doesn't appear to be any wildcarding of events.



This screencap shows the configuration box to send an xPL message.

Download the plugin here. I don't have much time to support this, so good luck with it ;) You should understand xPL. If not, read and ask.

Current Sensing the DVD Player

I grabbed several split core current sensors off eBay and have been gradually deploying them. This week, I added current sensors to the family room TV, amp and DVD player. Now, when the DVD player is turned on, the system checks if the TV is on. If it isn't, it sends IR to turn it on. Then, it turns the TV volume all the way down since audio will be piped through the amp. Next, it checks if the amp is on and powers that up if it needs to and sets its input to DVD.

Update: I have taken all these current sensors off their DS10A's and ran Cat-5 to the gameport controller I use as a contact closure device.

Touch Pro Finally!

The wife & I picked up our matching pair of Touch Pros last weekend from the Sprint store. What a great phone! A beautiful 640x480 screen, full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, WiFi & EVDO Rev A. It's taking some getting used to having a slider keyboard and the Touch Flo interface, but I've been using Voice Command a lot more now. The UI is a little laggy at times, but I have been doing some performance tweaks that I've read about in various forums. It's been only a week, but overall, I'm really liking this phone.

Wetness Sensors

I jumped in and picked up a bunch of wetness sensors mentioned here. I'll be using them under sinks, behind toilets, under the water heater and the AC drip pan. These will work great with the eternal DS10A deal.

Haven't had much time for automation the last few weeks. I am experiencing major X10 noise problems for the first time. Three different light switches upstairs are intermittently controllable and one turns on by itself. I spent an hour unplugging just about everything in the house, but no luck. I tried changing house and unit codes too. It's very odd as everything was working great 3 weeks ago but I haven't plugged in anything new. Sometimes, device power supplies will all of a sudden start spewing noise onto the powerline, but those have been easy to track down & put on a filter. I'm a little stumped right now and considered replacing them the light switches with UPB ones, but they are so expensive.

Current Sensing the Dryer

I got a few of the current sensors mentioned in this thread to monitor if certain devices are powered on. The first one I used on the dryer. I opened up the small access panel where the plug is terminated (as mentioned here), disconnected a leg, peeled it apart from the rest of the power cable and inserted it through the current sensor. I turned on the dryer to test it out (it was on the 'air dry' setting), but the sensor didn't activate because the heater wasn't on. If I switched it to a heated cycle, the sensor triggered. So I had to move the current sensor to the other leg, which is active whenever the dryer is on. After putting everything back together, I attached the sensor output to a DS10A so that it can send the dryer's power status wirelessly. Now, whenever the dryer turns on, the laundry room exhaust fan turns on and when the dryer is done, the laundry fan turns off 2 minutes later.

Camera Server Efficiencies

Our CCTV system has been hacked and pieced together over the last 10 years and became more convoluted than necessary. Now that the Avermedia setup is running, I've been able to simplify things quite a bit. Our system previously used an IR controllable 4-1 composite video switcher to select an active camera based on user input or motion sensors. The automation server would use this feed to take snapshots of the activity. Each camera was also modulated so we could view them on our TVs or Slingbox. Now, the Avermedia records all 4 cameras based on its software motion detection. Also, the software is running full screen as a quad viewer. Since the server is headless, I've connected a VGA to composite video converter and modulated that output. This allows me to remove 3 modulators and the video switcher while still allowing the automation server access to all 4 cameras (albeit smaller views). Finally, an old series 1 TiVo was recording the camera feed continuously and that too got turned off along with its modulator.

Mediasonic HD9-U2LA NAS

I bought a few things off of eBay of late, taking advantage of the 30% cashback from live.com. One of those things is Mediasonic HD9-U2LA NAS. It's a very simple NAS device that takes an IDE drive up to 1TB and has both a 100 Mbps ethernet connection and USB 2.0. Performance is not great - it looks like it sinks about 15-20 Mbps, but that's OK for my needs. Another annoyance is it uses FAT32 so file sizes are limited to 4GB. On the plus side it's fanless and quiet, relying on its aluminum casing to dissipate heat. Unlike a lot of cheap NAS cases, this one features a configurable idle period before the hard drive is powered down. For me, this is a key as the NAS is just for weekly backups run in the middle of the night. I suppose I could put it on an appliance module and power it on and off when I need it. I'll measure its power consumption later today.

Update: It uses 4 watts with the drive powered down and 11 watts with it active.

Airave Update

We've had the Airave a few weeks now and it works nicely. We've now got a solid signal for our Sprint phones and the quality is very good. Dialing out takes about 1-2 seconds longer, but incoming calls are seamless as is the transition to regular cell towers when we leave home.

X10 Web Interface Added Slug

Last night, I installed the lighttpd web server and BlueLava CGI interface on the Slug. Now, we can web control the lighting at our other place. It's a bit sluggish as the CPU seems to get bogged down a bit after issuing a command, but it does the job.

Camera Server Update

I had time yesterday to connect up 2 more cameras to the system. Oddly enough, the CPU utilization went down! It went from 26% with 1 camera to an astonishingly low 10% with 3 cameras and motion detection on each. I thought since it was dark out by the time I got the cameras connected, there wasn't much CPU used for motion detection on mostly black cameras. But it's bright outside now and the CPU is still low. Maybe with 1 camera, it does motion detection at 30 FPS, but dials it way down with more cameras? Who knows. I was thinking that I would have to reduce the resolution from 640x480 when I added more cameras, but it looks like I'll be able to leave it like that. I also put the server case on its side so the CPU heatsink would have better airflow (it's right under the power supply, which has no fan). That combined with the lower CPU utilization has the CPU temp down to 55°C from 66°C.

D201GLY2 Camera Server Testing

I received the Avermedia NV3000 Monday and I've had some cycles to play around with it. I've only hooked up one camera so far, but I've got it set up for motion detection and remote access. It works well so far, but I can't stand that it requires IE to view its web interface. Stupid ActiveX components. With the 1 camera running, I'm using about 26% of the CPU and it's getting quite hot - about 66°C, but from what I've read, that's typically how hot they run under load. I was hoping to get away with minimal cooling but it appears I'll have to add another fan to the case. There's already a 120mm Antec Tricool in the rear of the case. I'm looking at adding an 80mm on the side panel to exhaust directly over the CPU. Hopefully, by this weekend I'll have 2 more cameras online.

The NSLU2 and CM11A have been deployed at our other house. The Airlink IP cam is also there. I've been monitoring the system and everything is working fine. I'll need to do some tweaking to the lighting schedule in the future and add a few more lights to the system at some point.

Slug Doesn't Mix with Edgeport

The 2nd NSLU2 arrived and I started hacking it. I installed SlugOS, moved it to a 2GB flash drive and then installed gcc. Next, I installed HeyU, compiled the source right on the Slug. Then I installed the Edgeport driver ( kernel-module-io-edgeport ) and put the Edgeport/2 on one USB port. It was recognized according to the syslog messages in /var/log/messages, but I couldn't get HeyU to recognize CM11A connected to the Edgeport. I tried a whole bunch of things - reflashing SlugOS, recompiling Heyu, reinstalling the drivers, installing Misterhouse, trying a W800 on it, etc. In the end, it appears the Edgeport driver doesn't work on the NSLU2.

I headed over to Fry's and picked up an Airlink USB to Serial adapter. It has the PL2303 chipset that is known to work on the Slug. I installed the kernel-module-pl2303 driver and presto, everything worked. I'll need to add a USB hub later since this, unlike the Edpgeport/2, only supports 1 serial port. Now, I need to work on a HeyU lighting schedule.