Smart Home Blog

Today I found this discussion on the LinuxMCE developer forum about a search of light alternative for Ruby. Ruby is used to implement the custom logic of new devices added in the system. It’s called Generic Serial Device or GSD. Ruby is good for that purpose except it’s heavy a bit. So, the idea is to find something lighter but with the same embedded properties to provide basic home automation control and a/v control on a very cheap platform.

The Lua seems a good option. It’s simple, easy embedded and light. So, most probably it’ll chosen by LinuxMCE developers. Because there are more positive responses so far.

I developed an interface on Ruby between custom controller, based on ICPDAS, and LinuxMCE. I like Ruby because it looks like Perl. And I didn’t spend a lot of time to learn it. Haven’t seen any row of code by Lua yet. But if it’ll replace Ruby in GSD will port the interface to the new language. Or maybe Ruby and Lua will be available in GSD both. In any case will see.

LinuxMCE promised to include into coming version 0710 integration with INSTEON. Unfortunately, the release is delayed a bit (there is too much work, hopefully it’ll be at the end of December) but the INSTEON interface you can test even now. It’s implemented as Generic Serial Device (GSD) in Ruby and available in that forum thread. To be able play with it you have to have EZBridge, at least one INSTEON device and know how to add a new GSD device in LinuxMCE. All found bugs, problems, suggestion can be posted the same forum topic.

Here is a brief how to which can help you to add the Marantz SR5600 Digital Surround Receiver into your Plutohome installation. The receiver has RS232 conector and offers two way communication. This means if you press a button on the SR5600 or its remote you’ll able to see its changed status on Pluto Orbuter.

The interface is built using GSD functionality (GSD – Generic Serial Device, uses embedded Ruby to implement commands and handle responses). Thanks to Tinia who discovered and described all receiver commands and posted a clear algorithm to add and use SR5600.

Pluto allows to control A/V devices such as DVD players, amplifiers or TVs using Generic Serial Device (GSD). It supports Ruby to have possibility define commands for the devices. Generally, the device commands are plain text. For example, command ‘ON’ for DVD Denon looks like PWON and Ruby code will be like that:

<$"PWON\r"$>
However, some manufactures use hexadecimal characters in commands – 0xFE 0x03 0xC3 0x75. The Ruby code in this case will be following:

<$"\xFE\x03\xC3\x75"$>