Smart Home Blog

Recently I wrote about adding X10 automation functionality into MythTV interface. Now I’d like to introduce a way to integrate a modern wireless technology Z-Wave in your MythTV box. It’s called HACKmyth. It isn’t free: the basic unit costs $799 and extended version - $999. But you’ll able to control your lighting system and PVR from one user interface and using only one remote control of course.

I’d like to tell any bad words about HACKmyth. moreover, is good that Linux software is used in production systems. But IMHO it’d be better to buy FiireEngine with configured LinuxMCE which supports Z-Wave, X10, INSTEON (soon), includes MythTV, VDR, Asterisk and covers all areas of home for $799. In that case you’ll able to control almost all devices in your house.

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Metallurgy is a wide screen theme for MythTV. It fully supports ratio 16:9, even for OSD (On-Screen Display). Additionally, the theme is available in four colors: Blue, Red, Green and Purple and uses transparency to show OSD.

Metallurgy is supposed to be used in Mythtv 0.21 (dev). So, you have to build it from the source to be able to test that theme.

P. S. Developers of Metallurgy are not going to release the version for ratio 4:3. That fact pushes me to think about buying at least HD-Ready Plasma of LCD TV.

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A new version of MePo-wide theme for MythTV was released recently. That theme is optimized for resolution at 1280×720 at 100dpi. So, it might be interesting for all lucky owners of wide-screen TVs. MePo is based on OpenGL and offers alpha - transparent user interface.

The latest version of the MePo-wide theme for MythTV can be downloaded here.

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Recently I mentioned about possibility to control X10 devices from MythTV interface. Here is a detailed explanation how to add that feature into your media center. As I suspected that approach uses Perl interface to the X10 API (ControlX10-CM17). It also needs libdevice-serialpor.

Using approach showed below you’ll able to control X10 devices not only from MythTV on-screen menu but from its remote control as well. Great work!

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It’s pretty simple to have media center and lighting control in one box. Just install LinuxMCE… But if you already use MythTV and not going to break everything you may be interested in that thread. There is a simple explanation howto integrate X10 and MythTV using Perl scripts (MythX10 (240)) and flexibility of MythTV. I suspect this or similar approach is used on that video.

[via MythTV News]

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