Most Downloaded of 2009

Since 2009 is the first full year I developed applications, I thought it would be interesting to see which ones were most popular. I know 2009 isn't over yet, but the #1 app certainly won't be unseated by year's end. Here are the 10 most downloaded DoghouseLabs applications for 2009.

1. EventGhost xPL Plugin - 125 times
2. BlueTracker - 33
3. Blabber - 24
4. SageTV xPL Plugin - 20
5. xScript - 18
6. xPLSerial - 17
6. xEKG - 17
8. xPLAudreyTTS - 15
9. xPLGCal - 11
10. OSDBuffer - 9

Looking at the numbers, other than the EventGhost plugin, that's not a lot of downloads. Volume has never been my aim - these are things that I use in my home automation system and sharing them is my way of giving back for all the cool software and ideas I've benefited from over the past 15 years. I am surprised by how popular the EventGhost plugin is compared to all the other xPL apps. Also, I'm curious if anybody really uses the SageTV plugin besides me - as only one person has ever asked anything about it. Anyway, thanks for using my apps and reading my blog in 2009 and happy automating in 2010.

New App: Noise

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, but I admit that it's been a while since I last posted. I've been taking a break from automation stuff over the holidays, but I did work on something I've always wanted to implement...

Have you ever wanted to be automatically told that the baby is crying or the dog's barking? Introducing my latest xPL app, Noise. It uses your PC's mic (or possibly other input device), samples the input for a period of time, and issues an xPL sensor.basic message with information about the noise it detected, if any. You can read more about it here.

xPL Tweeting

I'm not sure why this hasn't been done earlier, but it looks like I'm the first to integrate xPL and Twitter. It was really easy to do and only took a few hours. A lot of the time was just figuring out what API to use and investigating OAUTH. I ended up using twitterizer's API, which doesn't support OAUTH. That's fine because I want this app to run standalone without any user interaction required for login, which OAUTH requires. The downside is the tweet source will show Twitterizer and not xPLTweet. Twitter no longer takes registrations for apps that do not use OAUTH, so there's no free publicity for my app in your Twitter streams. Bummer.

xPLTweet grabs OSD.BASIC messages explicitly targeting it (ie doghouse-xpltweet.yourinstance). It grabs the text portion of the message and tweets that. That's pretty much all it does. A future enhancement I may do will be to monitor who you're following and issue OSD.BASIC messages when they update their streams, but it could be messy if you follow many active Twitterers.

In any case, you can grap xPLTweet here.

Debugging ECM-1240 Setup

I've made some good progress on my ECM-1240 interface. It's a good thing I'm running it on xPLserial, where I can easily make changes to the script instead of having to recompile if it were an application. I found some problems in my script that caused it to miss a byte here or there and seems to be the source of the instability I was seeing. The current script has been running for 5.5 hours (since a power outage ended this morning) without having to reset the counters.

My script is no longer sending the readings over xPL, instead it's doing direct writes to MySQL. It was a pain trying to get ODBC working with XP Embedded, but eventually I did find an ODBC add on for HP thin clients. It doesn't say it supports the T5700, but it works anyway. Now, I'm updating power usage everytime it changes instead of whenever the xPL message was received.

As for this morning's blackout, it was quite a racket. I was awaken around 4AM to a symphony of beeping UPS's - 9 of them to be exact. I really need to open up a few of them and cut the buzzer wires. Some are really way too loud. I also discovered a couple with dead batteries. Good thing I got a couple more UPS's on Black Friday. It's actually cheaper to replace the low end ones instead of buying new batteries.

Random Progress

I was having some problems talking to the ECM-1240 through a virtual serial port and Lantronix MSS-100. It would occasionally lose its connection. I ended up deploying my leftover HP T5700 thin client, connecting it directly to the ECM-1240. I've got xPLSerial running on the thin client and it issues xPL messages every 60 seconds with the current power consumption. I'm still getting some weird problems with the ECM-1240 where the counters get out of whack on an Aux channel and exceed the usage on the main channel. This causes me to have to reset the counters and lose the cumulative statistics. I need to figure out how to work around this issue so I can get some valid full-day consumption readings.

I've also moved some xPL and xAP applications off my other 2 servers onto the thin client since it's not really doing a whole lot. It's chugging along at around 10% CPU utilization with about 5 apps running. I tried to run xPLSys on it, but it's crashing. There doesn't appear to WMI in the XPe build on the thin client. I may have to figure out a different method of getting the statistics.

Ironically, I've also been working on my automation interface GUI in expectation of buying some touchscreens. However, as the world found out yesterday, the Crunchpad died before birth. I was planning on buying several of those for touchpanels around the house. Hopefully, there will be some ChromeOS or Android tablets in the near future.

First Power Graph

I got around to putting the data into RRDTool. I just updated the post with some better looking graphs. I used this guide for creating stacked, outlined area graphs.

Back to Juggling Multiple Projects

Earlier this week, I started work on a new xPL app, currently called xPLSys. It monitors disk space, memory and cpu utilization and sends xPL messages containing the data. I'm not exactly sure how I want to package those messages as there really isn't a schema to hold the info I want to send - so either I make up my own schema or send multiple messages - one for each stat being watched. It's been running for a few days now but has been pushed aside for something else.



My Brultech ECM-1240 power monitor arrived Friday, and I started installing it that evening. I finished up most of the wiring Saturday morning and have been deciphering the serial protocol for real-time updates. I've been using our xPLSerial app to interface to it and code up the interactions with the built in scripting engine. I have to say, it's a very cool app and you should download it and donate ;). Despite being distracted by CAL's upset of Stanford (HOORAY), I figured out the serial protocol last night and have now been fine tuning my script. I've been thinking about rolling this into an app, but there is virtually no cpu utilization with the script running in xPLSerial.



I did make a change to xPLSerial to assist with debugging and that change will get pushed out eventually. I'm also considering removing the xPL from the name and calling it something else. It's really a serial port scripting engine with built in xPL functionality, but doesn't require xPL. In the meantime, I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the power data I'm getting every second.

Solar Contract Signed & ECM-1240 Ordered

We signed the contract a couple days ago with Real Goods Solar (Regrid Power) for a 3.68kW system. Projected install date is late February and power on in March. Might as well have it come online when there's more sunlight.

I also ordered the ECM-1240 power monitor from Brultech. I decided to put current transformers on the lines from the solar array, but I will have to extend those via Cat-5. They should be able to go 100 feet, but it looks like it will be very, very close to 100 feet or possibly more. Hopefully, it will work. I've already opened up a hole in the wall next to the sub-panel, installed a mudring and drilled through the stud next to the subpanel so I can pass CT wires from the subpanel to the mudring. I also ran a couple Cat-5 wires through the wall behind the subpanel to a closet in the adjacent bedroom. I'll need those to connect to the Cat-5 drops in that room to extend the solar array's CTs and possibly get the ECM-1240 on the network via a Lantronix MSS-100. With luck, it'll get here before the Thanksgiving break so I'll have time to work on it.

Power Monitoring

As we get ready for the solar panel installation, I've been looking into power monitoring systems. I'm going with the Brultech ECM-1240. This is their 2nd generation energy monitor and has been very popular with the Cocoontech crowd so it has been well tested in the real world. Brultech Support has been very helpful responding to my emails with timely replies. I am looking at purchasing Package A, which comes with the monitor, 2 200A split core current transformers (CTs) and 5 MicroCTs. I'll also need 8 more MicroCTs and possibly a couple of the 80 amp MicroCTs (for our AC unit).

We have a main panel with the electric meter that services the AC unit and a sub-panel inside our house. Everything else is fed from the sub-panel, so that's where the ECM-1240 will be. It will be easier because I can shut off the main breaker to the sub-panel, whereas the main panel has no shut off. The less I muck around in there, the better. I will have to connect the CTs from the AC breakers to the ECM-1240 upstairs by the sub-panel. The CTs can be routed over Cat-5, I just need to figure out how to get the CT wires out from the main panel and into my garage, but that can wait until the solar guys do the install. Maybe their electrician can help me out.

As for the solar install, we've finally decided on an array size, an inverter & an installer, but I'm waiting for the data access to be finalized before signing the contract. I've chosen not to use the ECM-1240 to monitor the solar array as I am working with the solar installer on getting access to the inverter via an RS232 add on board. They've been very responsive so far and hopefully this item will be resolved soon.

BlueTrackerScript Released

I figure everybody is tired of reading about solar and wants me to get back to automation stuff. I'm releasing BlueTrackerScript, an app that I use at work to tell if I'm at my desk (this affects forwarding for Google Voice Automation). Of course, you'll need a bluetooth adapter for your PC, leaving bluetooth running on your cellphone, and you'll need to add some actions to the included sample script, blue.js.

Since I use this on my work PC, I want it to be able to communicate with my home server without any interaction necessary (setting up ssh tunnels, etc.). So I created two special URLs on my public webserver, one for detection and one for timeout. The script will fetch the appropriate URL using Wget. On the webserver, it watches the access log for access to those specific URLs from a specific IP address (my work IP), and passes a message to the automation server if it detects those URLs have been accessed. The automation server then adjusts Google Voice forwarding.

BlueTrackerScript is available here.

Cleaning Solar Panels Uneccesary?

Yup, I'm still on my solar tangent. Getting close to deciding on a contractor, but not yet. I ran across this Google study on their solar installation. Their study shows that tilted panels, like virtually all residential rooftop mounted systems, don't need to be regularly washed. Rain does a good job of cleaning off the dust. This would discount SunRun's solar panel washing benefit. Panels that are installed horizontally do benefit greatly from a cleaning, however. To see more details on the Google study, check out their slides.

Solar Spreadsheet

A lot of the solar quotes I've gotten will take your current usage to show a cost-benefit analysis. What I want to see is what happens to that benefit when my usage changes. When sizing our prospective array, I want to see how much more electricity I can use before the costs really blow up. Ideally, I want to keep grid usage in the lowest 3 tiers. So I created this spreadsheet to help with planning.

It's based in Google Docs. It's read-only but if you go to File->Make a Copy, you can save yourself an editable copy. There is a 2nd sheet in the spreadsheet called 'info' that contains instructions on how to get the data for your specific scenarios. The information is based on California's PG&E standard residential service. You can adjust the formulas, tiers, rates, etc. based on your situation. Also note that many solar households go to the time of use rate schedule instead of the standard schedule, so that will affect calculations. For simplicity, I've chosen the standard schedule. Let me know if I've mucked anything up.