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Well, my pool is finally 100% automated with Insteon. Now that’s it’s done, I’m going to give you the details of exactly how I did it. Turns out to be quite easy!
There are only two things that needed to be automated on my pool – the light, and the pump. In addition, my pool equipment box has a 110V receptacle that my landscaping lights are plugged in to, so I automated that as well.
Read more…
I’m now running Indigo 4 to control all my Insteon devices. My pool light and pump are now controlled via Indigo, and also via a 6 button Switchlinc from SmartLabs – so I can manually turn them on and off from inside.
I’ve played around with a lot of different techniques for controlling my AV stack, from the Global Cache GC-100 to the RedEye iPhone to IR adapter. I think I’ll probably stay with RedEye for now to control the stack.
I did buy the LG BD390 BluRay player to stream video from my Home Server, but I’m really interested in the Boxee device once it comes out later this year. Running Boxee on my MacBook Pro tied to my LG HD LCD TV is pretty darn nice… the BluRay player just shows the movies as files; Boxee shows the actual box covers for them. And Boxee lets me play Pandora and many other online apps through my TV.
Finally, I’m just waiting for my iPad to be delivered on the 12th. I’m looking forward to that becoming my coffee table controller! I purchased the 64MB Wifi version – I figure if I really need to use it via 3G, I can buy a 3G wifi adapter and use my iPhone’s SIM card to drive it. Then my MacBook Pro, my iPhone, and my iPad can all share the bandwidth…
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After days of attempting to get my ripped DVDs to play across the network to my DirecTV DVRs, I was ready to give up. I knew that the DVRs would play media streamed over the network (well, at least some), but I couldn’t find ANYONE who could give me a definitive answer as to what video and audio codecs the DVRs would accept. I tried them all – MP4, MPG, H.264, AC3, MP2… some would play video, with no audio – some wouldn’t play at all.
Well, finally I decided that the problem might not be the codecs – but my media player. So, I did a bit of research and found the LG BD390 Blu Ray player. Since it was “Black Saturday”, I found a great deal at Best Buy.
So apparently, while we were away on a recent trip, our pool timer decided to stop working. So, I took this opportunity to automate the pool. I wanted to do two things – automate the pool light so that I don’t have to go back to the equipment to turn it on, and automate the pool pump so that the times can vary depending on the time of year without me having to set that stupid mechanical timer!
So, I headed over to smarthome.com and purchased 2 Insteon Relays for the light and pump switch, an Insteon TimerLinc to control the pump and light WITHOUT having to setup my automation server yet… and a really sweet 6 button keypad to replace my single porch light switch. I even sprang for the custom etched buttons!
Well, everything showed up on Wednesday, so I headed out to the pool equipment to start wiring in the relays. Wouldn’t you know it? The pump is a Double Pole, Single Throw switch (220V), and the Relay I bought was a SINGLE Pole switch 
So, no automated the pump just yet. However, the pool light switch was swapped out with no issues – and now I can remotely control my pool light.. as well as automate the times.
Just one thing – the bozos in the warehouse shipped me an APPLIANCE module instead of the 6 button switch (how do you make that mistake). So, I have to wait another week or so to straighten that out and get my sweet 6 button panel installed!
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Yep, I did it… I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Pro 17″, along with Parallels software. I’m now doing all of my development in virtual machines on the MBP… and it’s actually faster than running it native on my HP Quad Processor 64bit machine (probably because of the Vista version I was running).
This machine is SWEEEEET. 6.6 pounds of pure computing power. And you know what? It just WORKS… everything went together so well. There’s no doubt that OS X is an awesome OS… and since the MBP will also run Windows… why would I run a PC?
My PCs are now going to be relegated to running server software.. which is great for me, because I’m going to need a dedicated automation server very soon 
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Recently, I purchased an HP MediaSmart EX485 running Windows Home Server. What an awesome machine… it comes with 4 internal SATA bays, and an external SATA connection, as well as USB 2.0 ports. The case is very small… basically the size of 5 hard drives high, 6 inches wide and 8 inches deep… a very nice size. It comes with a 750GB hard drive. Read more…
So, it’s been a little while since I posted. I had a major contract to wrap up, and then the economy came along and put a halt to just about everything. But, now that’s all sorted out – it’s time to focus again on home automation!
I attempted to get mControl installed, but strange things kept happening. My CCF codes kept getting corrupted… so one minute, I’d have the system setup to turn the plasma screen on and off, and the next minute, it wouldn’t work anymore. Those sorts of issues early on in the project, coupled with the fact that the UI was sorely in need of some modification, led me to rethink my direction.
Ok, I’ve found the software that I will be using…. it’s mControl from Embedded Automation.
This system is written in Microsoft .Net (and I just happen to be a .Net developer)… it also works with all of the devices I already have or plan to purchase. One thing I’ll need to concentrate on is a good UI for the A/V stack in my living room. It’s not just enough to have my iPhone work as a remote control, with a few macros – I’d like it to be able to display a list of all of my online movies for example, and let me choose which to watch. Or… display logos for the different channels on DirecTV instead of having to move through the guide to remember the channel number.
mControl’s server has a built in webserver that will allow any web browser capable of running javascript to control the system. And surprise! They just came out with an iPhone interface… which is perfect for me
Still Waiting!
Well, I think I’ve given the folks at Cinemar MORE than enough time to help setup my MLServer, but their “CIO” has completely blown me off. He was all excited about working with me to get it working so that we could have a case study online of it’s use… but I guess that was all just smoke up my skirt!
Anyway… I’ll be jumping back into this in January on my own. I’ll be researching various pieces of software and hardware to use, and figuring out how to integrate it all. Should be a really interesting journey of discovery – so stay tuned!
Well, I’m still waiting to setup my MLServer. The CIO has promised to connect to my machine and check out the configuration, but to date, I’ve heard nothing from him. I hope this isn’t an indication of how “well” their customer service is. If I don’t have this configured by next weekend, I may have no choice but to find another automation controller to use as the basis for my system!
