Time to once again summarize what we have been working on in the past month.

Our latest efforts have largely focused around hardware:

1. We needed to update the hardware reference implementation.
2. We've also been hard at work trying to find a good, reliable infrared transmitter to include with the RI.
3. Playing with and liking B202 a lot.
4. Learning about hardware distribution.
5. Getting clubbed over-the-head by EU bureaucracy.

Read on...

Hardware Reference Implementation

We went over the existing bill of materials and found some of it little out of date. Some parts were not readily available anymore and had been superseded by newer, improved versions. Also, as discussed in last month's update, the idea behind the form factor of the box has changed a little, and we've changed the bill of materials to reflect this. Connectivity extensions like X10 and infrared are now separated from the main CPU unit rather than bundled all together into single box.

The new, improved bill of materials has all the parts listed and linked with details now. We've ordered parts for half a dozen units and we will have a box assembly fest in Amsterdam with our get-together. The hardware reference implementation is an ALIX box with CompactFlash card as storage, AMD Geode chip and 256MB of memory. It is nice and quiet -- having no fan or hard drive making noise -- and can be easily hidden and forgotten somewhere in the room.

We also went through a couple of Linux installations on this box. Ubuntu just out of curiousity -- this box obviously isn't designed to be your desktop. Unfortunately didn't have much luck with iMedia Linux distribution. The Voyage Linux distribution which is more geared towards the ALIX hardware and home automation use case we have in mind seems like a reasonable fit at this point. Installing the latest Sun JDK 1.6 on it was a breeze and it does get our Java runtime going. The box is no speed monster but for your regular home residence automation it doesn't need to be.

Which brings us to another idea we've been toying with and that's the product separation into Home and Pro versions. Home version could exist at low-cost do-it-yourself model based on our hardware RI, or any other spare hardware you may have available, featuring infrared support, X10 integration and so on. We plan on getting detailed installation instructions online for the software and some material on assembling the hardware if you prefer things from scratch rather than a pre-built box.

On the other side the Pro version caters to the professional installer community with features for KNX integration, monitoring, coordinated updates and other larger scale installation features. The hardware requirements may differ from the Home edition -- maybe a rack unit form, more memory and more CPU power. Nevertheless, the idea of designing things in the open remains the same and you'll be able to build anything between those two and create your own mix of features. Think of the two versions more like a guidance towards popular feature profiles.

Where Is My Infrared?

Another area of discovery has been the infrared hardware that is available for home automation enthusiasts. Frankly we've been a little surprised by how challenging it is to find a quality infrared hardware to work in combination with the popular LIRC database of consumer remote controls.

We have evaluated or are evaluating three products so far (documented some of our discoveries in the forums, see Reviewing Infrared: Iguana and Reviewing Infrared: TIRA threads). Each have their own set of little snags. Some LIRC remote codes may not play back correctly on the IR transmitter or the software controlling the hardware just locks up. Some are missing LIRC support for transmitting altogether. None of the IR products so far completely satisfy. Still working on couple of them trying to get issues fixed. However, the effort that has gone into it so far makes it obvious that this is an area where we can bring value to the HA community.

We will keep the forums updated as we make progress on infrared and sort the good from the bad.

Where We Discover Hardware Distribution Is Hard

Last month we were talking about how impressed we were with the Asus B202 box. We started to fancy the box so much we wanted to go and buy a few but couldn't find any in stock in Europe.

Being the impatient sort we are, we decided to talk to friends in Taiwan to help get us a few B202's straight from the source. Buy some and put them on an airplane to Europe. Sounds easy enough to do, what could possibly go wrong?

We had ten boxes bought and sent from Taiwan the next day. There was no shortage over there. Couple of days later the boxes land on an airport in Madrid. So far so good.

Then we hit the European bureaucracy. A big black hole. Where it took 2 days to deliver the boxes from across the world to Europe, it takes no less than ten days to deliver them on the last mile to the final address. And that's all before you start distributing them within EU where another week or two of snail mail is the only affordable way to move a product that originally cost some 250 euros. Sigh.

Multi-tiered distribution model you say? Yeah, now we know why.

What we learned from that episode (besides the obvious lessons of how infinitely frustrating bureaucracy can be) was:

• the B202 really is an excellent piece of hardware with a great price point
• maybe you can get yours by yourself from the local retail store :-)

We will provide the software and instructions on how you can turn your Eee Box into the ultimate home automation controller. Or perhaps even an attractive home theater now that the latest B204/B206 is coming out with an HDMI, remote control and all. We will make sure you'll be up and running with OpenRemote home automation on your Eee Box in no time.

Come Join the Chat

Last month we announced the availability of a chat room to the OpenRemote community. A lot of the hardware discussion has been going on in the Skype chatroom. Please come join us. It doesn't matter who you are or what you want to talk about, just come in and say hello, introduce yourself, tell your HA plans or ask a question. Some of you already have and we appreciate it. Just drop by.

What's Coming Up in December

We will be in Amsterdam on December 17th and 18th for our get-together. Planning to do some, uh... brainstorming, assemble some boxes and discuss deep mysteries of the GWT toolkit. If you are in the neighbourhood, drop a note and come say hello.

Also we will keep documenting our progress on both ALIX and B202 boxes, infrared and how you can get your OpenRemote controller built, installed and running. We are ever more convinced that there's value in providing a verified and community-tested stack of hardware and software for HA. Watch this space and the knowledgebase.

Until next month,

-- Juha

The recent blog activity brought an influx of new members to our site, from about 20+ registered to 120+ within a couple of days.

I think it's fair to say we weren't quite prepared for it. A number of people came in looking for areas where they could immediately start contributing. We're still busy trying to organize things here and to fully understand where OpenRemote best fits in the domotics field. However, the new member count helped us to prioritize a bit and attempt to set the website up for easier access to ongoing projects and finding the community leads responsible for the current work activities.

What the number of people joining demonstrates to us is the demand for an open platform to address home automation. The industry is filled with proprietary hardware, proprietary software and fake open efforts that are all about customer lock in. As geeks -- and so far what OpenRemote is all about is a geek effort -- we feel unfairly bound by these proprietary products. We want to express our geek creativity at home and come up with new ways to automate our houses.

What we are hearing from the community today is a desire to have an open platform that increases the customer choice when choosing hardware, helps installers integrate different solutions and take an open approach in development to improve the quality of the software. Increasingly our OpenRemote Controller software is shaping up to be the integration platform for the various existing proprietary architectures out in the field. We are currently evaluating X10, INSTEON, KNX and Crestron as the technologies to integrate OpenRemote with. The leads for these projects came from the community and they are scratching their itch in a true Open Source way. Integration of infrastucture is where Open Source excels and that's what we are hoping to see here as well.

There will be many more opportunities to participate in the projects, various user interface and device database tasks come to mind. Right now if reading protocol specs, reverse engineering protocols on the wire or implementing protocol stacks in Java fits your fancy, have a look at the following project pages:

• X10 Integration Project
• INSTEON Integration Project
• KNX Integration Project
• Crestron Integration Project

If you want to do more than talk (we like busy hands working on code, documentation, visual design, testing) feel free to contact the leads directly, leave a comment on their project page or leave a message in the forums. Also, keep an eye on our contribution page where new projects and tasks will appear.