The house that speaks
By john on Jun 25, 2008 in Apple, Home Automation, featured
Earlier in the week I mentioned I had a project cooking that I thought was pretty cool. Last night, after I received the last piece of hardware I needed to make it work, I got it all set up and working. This didn’t involve much heavy lifting (none, actually) as I had already done the difficult parts when I set up a proof of concept to show Ann ( my girlfriend, for those who don’t know).
I’ve had it set up for a while such that, when I wake up in the morning I press a button on a keypad (mounted in wall) in my room and my room light comes up slowly – so as to be easy on the eyes – and the bathroom vanity lights turn on. The vent fan is then set on a 5 minute timer to turn on about the time my shower really starts producing steam – and turns itself off after about 15 minutes, ensuring it got all the steam. I press the same button on my way out my bedroom door and the bathroom light shuts off, as does my bedroom light.
Pretty cool way to do things – one button controls everything. It just got cooler.
Well, last week I was over at my buddy Jason’s house when he showed me what he’d cooked up for his mornings, and I was so impressed I decided to implement it too – he didn’t seem to have a problem with that as he sent me the scripts he was using to make it happen (Thanks Jason!), and I am planning on adapting the same technology for other uses down the line which I’ll share back with Jason.
NOW in the morning, I press a button when I wake up and all of the same things happen as I described above, with the addition that music starts playing over the speakers in my room, rising in volume for a short period of time (less than a minute) then fading down to the background as you hear the house say “Good morning, John. It is Wednesday, June 25th 2008. The weather calls for strong T-Storms and a high of 86 degrees” After which the music volume is put back to a more normal volume and plays through until you turn everything off again with the press of the same button.
So, how does this work? It’s actually the most complex thing I’m doing with the home automation system. My home automation server is remotely executing applescripts (via ssh) on one of my other macs, which tells the mac to pull down the weather report, parse it for the outlook and temperature, then reads it off. The music is all done via the same applescript, controlling itunes. The audio is sent from that mac to the bedroom speakers via AirFoil by Rogue Amoeba, using my airport express base station (with airtunes).
I’d LIKE to eventually have it be able to tell me what’s on my plate for the day by reading major appointments off my calendar ( or items from my action lists in Things), but I’ve yet to have the time to really dig down and see if I can get something like that going. Hopefully I can do that sometime soon, once I get my home office put together.
Speaking of which! I need your ideas! I’ve yet to put together a home office in the new house, and I’m currently in the planning phase for how to do that. I’d like it to be “geek friendly” and tech heavy, but also not cost a fortune. I’m going to be spending some money on a acoustic dampening rack enclosure for my xserve and dell servers (only getting a 4u enclosure, anything more is cost prohibitive), and will likely be building a desk out of some cabinets / book shelves that I have available for free (plus some lumber I can buy at Lowes or Home Depot) – but I need other ideas for techie things I can incorporate into it.
Leave your thoughts or ideas in the comments!
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