After finishing the first implementation of Russound support, I figured it is easier to demonstrate this with a little video then writing a long story
Currently the Russound commands are configured inside a property file so it is easy to extend.
We support 6 zones and 6 sources in the moment. Each zone can be turned on/off, the source selected and the volume changed.
When the server push is working, …
Catching up on some hardware news from the last couple of months. With the release of Windows 7 there's been a bunch of updates to low-cost Atom-based hardware units, all of which look attractive as an entry-point to host OpenRemote Boss at your home, among other things.
The hardware at E300 price level is now coming with a dual-core Atom and NVIDIA ION graphics processors. With the entry of NVIDIA to low-end market, the units can now reportedly handle 1080 resolution high-definition content with ease (something that was too much to ask from the previous generation a year ago) and HDMI connectivity comes as a standard. DVD drives are becoming part of the hardware configuration as well, see for example the latest Eee Box model at Engadget.
A very quick update on the OpenRemote KNX Lite application. It has been updated on the Apple App Store to version 1.2.1 and can be downloaded via iTunes. The KNX lite application has moved to a new OpenRemote account – we are still migrating the full version of the app which you can get from Jorg's personal account. …
It has been a few month since I have made a post about the UPnP integration for the OpenRemote Controller. I have in my previous post discussed about the possibilities of UPnP. Now, here is a quick video of this implementation in action.
A bunch of us are heading to Atlanta around September 10th to check out the CEDIA show. Would be happy to try and organize an ad-hoc get-together over drinks and meet and chat. If you plan to be there and would like to sit down and discuss the current state of the HA industry, leave a note here (or email). Will post more information about what/where/when as we get closer to the event. …
Our third and final milestone for OpenRemote Boss 1.0 was already tagged in July but I never got around announcing it. Better late than never.
What is new in M3 is largely changes on the hosted online tools. The additional protocols (KNX, TCP/IP, HTTP and Telnet) that were added to the controller in M2 are now supported on the UI composer...
The current panel rendering is based on the existing iphone.xml UI schema and therefore most suitable for Android based touch phones with similar screen dimensions (G1, HTC Magic/Hero, etc.)
The functionality in the current implementation is roughly equivalent of OR Boss milestone 2 (M2) that was released earlier in June this year. Video of the iPhone UI is available on YouTube. The features in iPhone panel for M3 (mainly controller auto-discovery) has not yet been added to the Android codebase.
As I am building my house I find it very hard to mix and match HA devices in the US. For example, I want to use European KNX panels (See here), why? because they look good, with hardware I can find in the US (e.g. Lutron). Here is the kicker, the installers I talk to immediately reply "But you have to go to Crestron". Mind you all I am trying to do is lights/shades/AC, …
We've started the work on designing the next version of the user interface composer. From user functionality and user interface point of view this is going to bring some notable changes to the current 1.x release branch.
Marc described some of the logic driving the changes in his earlier UI composer, next generation post in June. …
I just want to write a little about my KNX demo board which is featuring an ALIX (reference hardware).
The KNX stuff consists of a power supply, a 4way sensor, a 2way switch, a dimmer and an USB gateway.
The USB gateway is connected to the ALIX box and I have an eibd running which is performing the bus access and provides KNX/IP protocols.
As I'm writing this page, UPnP has been just committed to the source repository for the OR Controller. So here are a few details for my contribution:
What is UPnP?
UPnP is a web service oriented protocol which was designed for controlling "devices". It works on IP, has a device discovery process. Each devices has attributes, and services. Each service has attributes, state variables and actions. The point is to trigger actions remotely.
One of the more frequent questions we get about iKNX is how does it fit with the rest of the OpenRemote product strategy? OpenRemote RI is based around a controller whereas iKNX is a product connecting directly to a KNX gateway. …
As I was working towards our Amsterdam event next week, I put together some customized iPhone console screens with the new OpenRemote 1.0 Milestone 2 software (a sneak preview, release coming soon!).
They turned out better than what I had expected, so worth sharing and describing some of the new features...
It has been another very busy month at OpenRemote. Here's our update to keep you abreast of recent developments.
iKNX joins OpenRemote
We are pleased to announce that OpenRemote has acquired exclusive rights to iKNX, the iPhone product from Jörg Falkenberg. Jörg will be joining our community as iKNX lead.
iKNX offers an iPhone stack that talks to a KNX install over IP network. We will open source the KNX/IP stack for Apple (for those in the know – like Calimero, but in Objective-C instead of Java) and work to integrate its UI elements with ours. We will invest in its future... (read more)
With the OpenRemote 1.0 Milestone 1 tagged and new milestones to follow soon, I thought it would be a good idea to put the components that create OpenRemote 1.0 release together in a high-level overview (see the image on the right).
The OpenRemote 1.0 release will consist of 4 separate components. Two of them will be hosted online and are required at configuration time, one is deployed on OpenRemote Box (ORB) and one is a user interface panel component on the iPhone. The latter two are runtime components, required for the daily use of the OpenRemote system... (Read More)
Somewhat overdue, a few updates on what has been happening in the OpenRemote code repository lately.
Summarizing shortly, we've completed and released the source code for OpenRemote 1.0 Milestone 1 (M1). This is the first milestone checkpoint towards the final OpenRemote 1. …
Finally last night at 2.00am in the morning I got it all working!
See this quick and dirty video showing me using the iPhone app (with my own modelled design) controlling my Settop box, Roku player and DVD/Sound system!
Yes!!
The only problem I have is switching audio channels on the home theather system because I don't have a distinct code for that (yet). It works, it's fast, it's fun! Openremote 1.0 here we come!
Don't miss your chance to meet the team, share experiences and be part of the community!
Come to Amsterdam on WednesdayJune 3rd 2009 for our first event of 2009.
The location is
[Mirror Centre Ter Gouwstraat 3 (Oosterspoorplein), 1093 JX Amsterdam|http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Ter+Gouwstraat+3,+amsterdam, …
I've updated our KNX information in the knowledge base. Much of it is the same information from our previous knowledge base but with an updated structure to make it a little easier to read. There's some new KNX information in the pipeline as well, to appear soon.
I know there are many members on our website who work with KNX professionally. …
Last weekend I spent yet another night the in the CitizenM hotel at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
It's a new chain of super modern budget hotels and I love the concept. The rooms are small but very smart. And equipped with some hot home automation technology.
I would like to share the experiences with you and see what lessons we can learn from it.
After a bit of a hiatus it's time to get back to our normal routine of updating you on our progress. While it took a longer than usual for this update to arrive, you can expect to hear more frequently from us from now on.
Website Update
Main reason for our prolonged silence was a complete revamp of our website. We've restructured a lot of information, thrown out some, wrote a bunch of new content. …
Just a quick note for those looking for source, also branched UI Composer in subversion for Beta 1. As with the earlier Beehive branch, treat this as a code dump for now. More structure and instructions to follow.
Jean-Luc posted some shots of the first end-to-end infrared setup, with iPhone talking over Wifi to controller which is translating the incoming HTTP REST API calls to LIRC infrared commands.
Creating the user interface to control the infrared device is done through OpenRemote UI Composer. The couple of new videos on our YouTube channel show how to create the buttons for your iPhone or iPod Touch...
In essence what we're trying to do voor release 0.1 is to reproduce the above picture without the apple remote. So after some wiring you get this:
On the left with the two oversized antenna's the Alix box running Linux, Java and the controller software (The Openremote Box). Attached is the IR device with the wire pointing to the IR receiver of the Apple laptop. …
A guest member popped in on our chat the other day and asked screenshots of the software. While we haven't released anything yet, we are fast approaching our v1.0 prototypes (or should we call them betas?) and can share some shots of them.
Admittedly, with all the work going on updating the website we haven't done a good job of updating the community with all the other work that has been going on in software side. We are slowly working to get back up to speed on keeping the community up to date (and getting the code to a shareable state) and will work on getting more complete status updates on the site.
The last time I was involved in getting a brand new Open Source project off the ground was in year 2000. Back then the concept of the social web or Web 2.0 was pretty much non-existent, if it had even been born yet. Now we discover and share content through social networking sites and they've become very much the pulse of the web.
We've set up couple of profiles so far, one on Twitter and another on YouTube.
As we are working on the site to get it in shape, chat is proving quite popular.
It has been a bit of a struggle to get the chat going. We tried a Skype public room first but that didn't take on – too many steps from a website visit to starting a client and figuring out where the room is and so on.
The same problem would seem to affect all external chat clients whether Skype, IRC or something else. …
As the site migration progresses, we've reached a stage where it's ok to let visitors to take a peek. A lot of things remain to be done but certain base functionality is already in place.
The DNS records have been mostly updated to point to the new site. This means new visitors should land to the new site instead of the old one. Some old links will no longer work (we haven't redirected any of the old links). There are certain DNS lookups that still point to the old site, mostly for backup. …
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