Currently I'm going a little nuts with the CF instructions for the ORC. I've picked up several CF cards, all 2G. A Joe Pfeiffer sent me a link to his page where he talks about getting grub and openembedded running on a CF card. This is very useful and I'll apply what I learn there on my LORHA page.

At the moment there are two immediate concerns I need to address. The first is trying to create a script that will automate the building of the CF image. I'm trying to do this without having a card. This is not easy but should be possible. This will allow me to build new images and post them to the web site without writing each to the CF card and possibly burning it out. Then developers and uberGeeks can drop the new images onto their cards and not be bothered fighting with that.

The second concern is a bit more difficult. The reason we need a custom distribution is that it is unacceptable to give the customer a new image to put on a CF card. This means they have to take apart the ORC. I'd rather see the updates automatically be delivered and installed without the user intervening. This is going to take some work as there are limited resources on an embedded system and you can't treat a CF card like a hard drive.

I'd also like to create a recover partition on the flash card. That way when a system gets really mess up (and it will happen) we can still fix the problem remotely without a 'truck roll'. To replace the CF card. The iMedia distribution currently uses grub. I propose to keep using grub and to take advantage of it with the two partitions. The first partition is the recover partiion. The second is the main application partion. This is the one we will normally boot into.

I'll also fool around with a USB boot flash version of the image. This is important for installers. It would be nice if they didn't have to open the ORC but rather installed the flash card, rebooted and it could automatically fix the CF problem. This is probably pie in the sky but a worthy goal none the less.

A little bit of a test. Yeah I know this belongs in the Bio section but I just want to see how this works.

My background is in networking (I work in a lab testing networking services), embedded processors (many different microcontrollers), software (assembly, C, Perl and a few other languages).

On the home automation front I wrote a book called Linux Smart Homes For Dummies. I've been using X10 since the early 80's with the Heathkit RS232 interface. In 2005 I started using Insteon (the interfaces support communication with Insteon devices and X10 devices).

I have a number of devices including IR, X10, Insteon, Z-Wave, digital and analog IO, and IP attached devices.