Smart Home Blog

Yesterday the release candidate 1 of LinuxMCE 1.1 is out. According to release note all known issues of beta 2 were fixed. So, you can download (from Torrent, as all previous releases) and try it. Please, submit all found bugs to help LinuxMCE developers come to stable version faster.

I tried to install Linux MCE 1.1 Beta 2 but during installation IP of my PC was lost. As result of that the installation failed. It happen “because LMCE uninstalls knetworkmanager in place of arping midway through the installation.” There are actually two ways to solve it (thanks to gazlang):

• re-boot and re-start the LMCE installer when it loses connection, then it’ll go all the way through;
• install arping before starting the LMCE installer, reboot first and make sure you are still connected to the net.

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According to AutomatedHome the third generation Z-Wave ZW0301 Single Chip is available in production. Its features include the ability to support battery-to-battery networks, lower power consumption, and full interoperability with previous Z-Wave products. Depending on the volume, the ZW0301 has 15 to 30 percent lower cost than the 200-series generation of Z-Wave chips. This means that dimmers, switches, sensors etc which are based on Z-Wave technology will be also cheaper and more efficient.

Taking in account of Z-Wave initiative to combine TCP/IP and Z-Wave I can guess that Z-Wave will be at least one of dominate wireless technologies in the home automation area.

P. S. You can buy Sylvania Z-Wave Deluxe Starter Kit, included one remote control and two #2000Z plug-in lamp modules, for $99.99. Good opportunity to start automation of your home with leading technology!

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According to Maemo.com Nokia has released an update for its Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition. The update (version number 4.2007.26-8) includes Skype client support, Adobe® Flash® 9 browser plug-in, improvements in online use times and single memory card support up to 8 GB. Another great improvements are increasing battery life in case of using wireless connection and better sensitiveness of touch screen.

So, it’s a good opportunity to re-flash my N800 and check how it affect the Plutohome Orbiter work.

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The new version of home automation system Plutohome was released last week. The version 2.0.0.44 contains only bugfixes (you an see a full change log here). I waited this version because a) it contains a MythTV package built with support DVB and b) the problem with sending OFF event to the GSD device was fixed there.
Additionally, the OpenGL libraries were removed from the dependencies of SDL Orbiter. So, now it’s possible to build Plutohome Orbiter for Nokia770 (N800) for os2006/2007. You can find binary files here.
There is a serious problem in the Plutohome - upgrade to the new version. It causes a lot of problems. I suspect that it’ll be much better to stay on some version (but it’s difficult - basically there is not s stable version of Plutohome) and do a fresh installation when it needs in upgrade. But all custom stuff - scenarios, GSD devices, Ruby code etc transfer manually using some scripts.
Anyway, we have to reinstall our server to have all functionality working properly.

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Yesterday a new version of Plutohome, one of the best open source solution for building home automation systems, was released. There are several principal updates related with Asterisk, Linux and SDL Orbiters, Bluetooth Dongle and hardware detection. The full change log can be found here.
Unfortunatelly, I didn’t find any additionals or improvements of VDR integration. Hope I’ll be able to configure it on my installation I still have a problem with boot of diskless Media Director. The on-screen Orbiter is not appiare at all.

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