Smart Home Blog

Fibaro started with producing Z-Wave devices – switched, dimmers, sensors etc. But now it came to the point to give its folks a whole solution including fully loaded Z-Wave controller – Home Center 2. It looks good at the first glass. Based on a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom and Debian OS, it can cover all consumer’s needs in the home automation area. The HC2 provides web interface to setup and manage the system. So, you can use any PC/Laptop/Tablet to work with it. Additionally Fibaro offers special application for iOS devices (no Android yet unfortunately).

User interface is simple and intuitive. Interesting that system allow to add not just real devices but virtual as well. Using that possibility consumer may add integration with some external TCP/IP based sub-system which might be useful. The HC2 supports scenes, of course, and their setup is not complicated. Consumers should enjoy graphical builder of conditions with various logical operands.

The Fibaro Z-Wave Home Center 2 looks interesting and promised. But it’d be nice to see comparison with the most popular and probably the best Z-Wave controller at that time MiCasa Verde Vera/VeraLite.

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.

Recently I wrote about home automation with Python. The good opportunity to do that is using your preferable program environment and automate your home. Today I found another good project – jHomeNet. jHomeNet is Java Home Automation system based on Java, of course. Since it’s Java the system supports any operation system (at least Linux, Windows and Mac OS) where Java can be run. It also needs Mysql database. Currently jHomeNet allows to control 1-Wire and x10 devices only.

The first release of jHomeNet was on August 2005. Since that time the system can do a few things only (according to user’s manual). But as I see jHomeNet includes an application server and there is a chance that it will be expanded to the other area of the house and will support more devices.

A new version of HouseBot, Windows based home automation system, was released recently. The HouseBot offers following features:

• Automatic or manually executed Tasks
• Device / Equipment control and monitoring
• Control programs on computer
• Extensible through VBScript
• Remote Control
• Customizable Remote User Interfaces
• Plugin architecture

Read more »

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.