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Asked — Edited

Home Automation

Hey guys,

I mentioned in another link that I use home automation a lot and have my home totally automated. The system I use is PLC-BUS, but essentially it is all controlled by a PC running Homeseer.

I would love to know if any others are using Homeseer too. The system allows control of events and actions in the house from a mic input. It can be any mic that shows up in Windows.

I would love to be able to use the mic onboard the robot as a voice input to the homeseer system (this only requires that it is selectable as an input mic within windows) but don't know if will show in windows ? My wowwee rovio robot when connected showed as a mic input. It would allow me to give the home automation system voice commands from the bots! Also the home automation system has a speaker output which would be cool to have the robot speaker selectable as an output (as long as the speaker shows in windows as an audio output it will work - he could then announce reminders, tell you when someone is at the door etc ? I also have a Sonos system linked to the automation system via a homeseer plugin. So it kind of opens up the question of how we can integrate the bots into our home better - tell them to turn the lights on - play us music etc! It's well exciting!

Cheers,

J


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#1  

My currently on hold Project Jarvis is planned to do all that however not with homeseer but with EventGhost and VoxCommando.

@Toymaker has also posted some HA info for his robots.

Once I get Six I'll be playing with the V4 and my current HA setup and seeing how the two can work together which will determine if the Jarvis physical robot will ever happen.

An old explanation of Jarvis, he now does a lot more including communicating with ARC and even does my grocery shopping.

More Jarvis videos

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#2  

Here is some of our home automation that Rich mentioned, the same tech is used in the EZ:1 and EZ:2 robots.

#3  

I used to use Homeseer but the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) was too low with X10 components, and due tot he low WAF I couldn't invest in the better Z-Wave or other protocols when they became available, so my system is currently dormant.

I am sure given the rich plugin interface and built in features of Homeseer it would be fairly simple to do integration. If nothing else, in Homeseer it is easy to make web controls, and EZ-Robot's script interface can call web pages (and you can call script commands on EZ-Robot's web page as well). Pretty sure you could also interface via Telnet and probably half a dozen other ways as well.

Alan