Think the software brains behind a complicated smart home system is too expensive to buy? Well, this is not always the case, specifically when you have open source smart home enthusiasts piecing together Perl based smart home software. The brilliant minds at Misterhouse (http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/) have seemingly pieced together a nice piece of programming to help all home automation seekers.
From the site: "MisterHouse is an open source home automation program. It's fun, it's free, and it's entirely geeky. Written in Perl, it fires events based on time, web, socket, voice, and serial data. It currently runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2k/XP and on most Unix based platforms, including Linux and Mac OSX".
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
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I've used MisterHouse for about 2 years and it provides plenty of functionality albeit at the expense of having to learn Perl. The learning curve is steep, the documentation somewhat outdated and joining the mailing list is highly-recommended.
If you're looking for free Home Automation software, consider Motorola's Premise Home Control:
http://www.premisesystems.com. It was a ground-breaking product, largely developed at Lantronix before being sold to Motorola, that wons many accolades and sold for $$$. Then they shelved both development and support ... and release it to the public for free.
It can be installed and configured much faster than MisterHouse ... especially if you are using Windows. Plus it can be programmed using simple macros, graphically using logic diagrams, or with VBScript using a full IDE with debugger. The whole thing is object-oriented and you can build your own classes. It also
does some very clever things with audio and video.
Documentation is excellent and you can still download and view video-tutorials from Motorola's site.
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