Doug Crompton wrote:
I remembered I had an x10 bottlerocket in my X10 junkbox so I connected it
to a spare serial port on my linux server (asterisk resides there) and
implemented with some mods the code mentioned earlier....
http://lorance.freeshell.org/asterisk/#asterisk-can-control-the-world
and it works great. Now I have one more way to control X10 devices. I can
even call my VM on the way home and turn on my lights or whatever before I
get home.
I would suggest that people who don't already have an investment in home
automation equipment should look at Insteon rather than X10. Insteon is
a next generation version of X10 that provides backwards compatibility
with X10. The devices are a little more expensive, but not as expensive
as some of the other alternatives. Insteon provides 2 way communication
and is a lot more reliable than X10.
If you already have an investment in X10 devices you can slowly convert
to Insteon, since Insteon provides backwards compatibility, i.e. X10
controllers can control Insteon devices and Insteon controllers can
control X10 devices, however you won't get all the advantages of Insteon
until you have Insteon controllers controlling Insteon devices.
For people with some soldering and basic circuit design skills, you may
want to consider using ethernet as a home automation bus for some
things. I love the Olimex PIC WEB and PIC Mini Web development boards
(they cost $49.95 and $39.95 respectively). They have an ethernet port
and an expansion connector for the available PIC I/O pins. Microchip
provides a free C compiler for Pic processors, and they also have an
open source networking stack that works on the Olimex boards. So with a
ribbon cable connector and a small breadboard with a few IC's and/or
driver transistors you can build a device that responds to commands via
the network (or via a built in web server) from your Asterisk server
that does about any task you can think of. Lots of fun ... I'm currently
building a voicemail indicator (my wife didn't like me taking her
answering machine away with the blinking lights when we switched to
Asterisk voicemail) using a PIC Web board. Next project will be a web
based sprinkler controller.
John
_______________________________________________
--Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
asterisk-users mailing list
To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
