[Sussex] I have a cunning plan...

[Mark Harrison]

Matthew,

I was a conference speaker at "UKHA2003" (UK Home Automation), so have more
than a passing interest in this.

The normal practice seems to for the house to poll a POP3 mailbox, and act
on the information contained therein. I have to admit, my own house is, erm,
controllable by IRC using a bot :-)

Easiest way to boil the kettle from a PC would be to control the mains using
something like X-10. You would need two bits of hardware:

- An "appliance module" which is a plug-in device that sits between your
kettle and the wall
- A "CM12" computer control module which plugs into a serial port and
controls relays

X-10 works by modulating control signals onto the mains, and the hardware is
fully CE approved, so legal/safety concerns.

The software you'd need would be something like

- xAP-CM12 which is available (somewhere) on www.xapautomation.org
- xAP-POP3, the poller
- A basic script to parse the POP3 output (something like xAP-in-a-box would
do, but overkill)

xAP is an OpenSource protocol for home automation info. Oh, and it's an
OpenSource project I'm heavily into.

If you fancy a trip over to Maidenbower to see "the automated home in
action", let me know.... Alternatively, if you've got broadband, you can see
"The Mark Harrison Video" at
http://www.broadbandbritainchallenge.co.uk/videos_broadband_user_stories.html

This video was sponsored by BT, hence I had to bang on about how broadband
made it easier :-) ... but it does show what's straightforward to do these
days.

Regards,

Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Macdonald-Wallace" <matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk>
To: "LUG email list for the Sussex Counties" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 1:33 PM
Subject: [Sussex] I have a cunning plan...


> However it would appear that I need to use Procmail in order to
> accomplish it as it involves triggering an action before I get home.
>
> Idea is to email the house and when I get in, it does "Stuff"[1]
>
> Any offers on a good place online to learn about procmail recipies or
> are books going to be the best bet?
>
> TIA,
>
> Matt
> --
> +----------------------------------+
> |Matthew Macdonald-Wallace                  |
> |The Truth Will Set you Free              |
> |http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk/  |
> +----------------------------------+
> "We need to change that attitude about how prolific we can be with the
> people's money." George W. Bush March 16, 2001
>
> [1] "Stuff" being an as-yet unknown action, executed by a shell script,
> probably something like boiling the kettle etc... :D
>
>
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>