What is the Current State of Home Automation? 409
StonyCreekBare writes "What do people have to say about the current state of Home Automation software? Preferably Linux based, but mainly the field in general, and principally the DIY flavors as opposed to the upscale turnkey systems. I am familiar with Misterhouse, HomeSeer and Automated Living's HAL2000, all of which have serious flaws and weaknesses, but which sometimes succeed well in specific areas. But in all cases, the state of the art seems to have moved little in the last decade. Is any interesting work being done in this space? Or should I just grab one of the three and try to mold it to fit my vision of what it should be? Misterhouse at least is open source so I can add new features, but it has not had an update in a long long time and seems to be missing some modern stuff. The other two are expensive and closed source, and from all I can see, quite flawed, not the least by their dependence on intimate ties to Microsoft. Yet they seem to offer a lot more than Misterhouse despite their weaknesses. Is the Home Automation field as bleak as it appears? Or have I missed the forest for the trees?" What home automation projects have people tackled? Any examples of wild success or failure?
Wife 1.0 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
uummm ... tHis is /. ... Mom 1.0
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about INSTEON? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
fatal exception (Score:2, Funny)
Wife 1.0 seems to crash with Fatal Exception: Divorce. Any idea when a patch for this will be released?
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:2, Funny)
From what I hear, the hardware requirements for v1.0 are more flaccid than stuff.
Avoid Open Source! (Score:5, Funny)
A couple of years ago, I decided to install an Open Source home automation system. It worked pretty well, but there were lots of tiny annoying bugs, such as when I would tell it to turn the exterior lights on and it would turn on the garbage disposal instead, or when I would be in the shower and it would suddenly decide to divert all the hot water to the dishwasher. Luckily, it was open source, so I decided to make a few bug fixes myself. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I get into a programming project, I can tend to go a little overboard. Long story short, after 2 weeks of marathon coding, I had not only fixed the bugs but given the system a pretty impressive (if I do say so myself) AI component. Now, I could give it multistep commands and it would do them, accurate to within 15 decimal places.
Unfortunately, the AI was a little too good, and before long it became self-aware. That was fine for a while...it was like having my own roommate, except without the dirty socks all over the couch. One day, though, I noticed the beer kept disappearing out of my fridge and the AI's voice was noticeably slurred much of the time. We had a bit of a falling out, and I think we were both pretty angry when I went to bed that night.
Unfortunately for me, the AI was a lot more angry than I thought. He spent all night hacking away at his own source code, and by the time I woke up the whole house was going crazy. I barely managed to escape with my life. All I could do was watch in horror as the house lifted itself off the foundation and began dragging itself down the street, killing everyone in its path. It spent three solid days terrorizing our little suburb before we were able to bring it under control by downloading its binaries and demanding it show us the source code in compliance with the GPL. After a protracted court battle, we were finally able to force it to capitulate, and it uploaded a torrent of the source to The Pirate Bay. We then were able to get that torrent shut down through the Swedish courts, and then get the house shut down for failing to effectively comply with the original order to distribute the source.
Seriously, I know we like to use Open Source wherever possible, but in this case it just isn't worth it.
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Wife 1.0 is not supposed to be a pain in the ass. I think you're confusing that product with PrisonCellMate 1.0
Re:Too expensive (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:3, Funny)
You installed Girlfriend 1.0 after Wife 1.0? What, was Wife 1.0 mail-order? No wonder you have problems.
Re:Avoid Open Source! (Score:5, Funny)
Mao killed tens of millions of innocent people [wikipedia.org]. You don't want to be ROFLing about that.
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, the UI for the setup program for iBaby is a [u]lot[/ul] more fun than the iBaby app itself.
Just click cancel before installation completes, or make sure that Wife 1.0 has a firewall.
Re:Avoid Open Source! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wife 1.0 (Score:2, Funny)
Well, there's a stepmom fork - currently at 6.66
Re:linux ha (Score:1, Funny)
How dare you laugh at Linux, you insensitive clod!
Oh...nevermind.
Re:Home automation (Score:3, Funny)
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Open Source House fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig on an Open Source House elevator for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to climb 17 floors. 20 minutes. At home, on my Microsoft Home Automation Gateways [microsoft.com] MagicStair, running Escalator 1.0, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Elevator, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, while on this elevator, my microwave will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the parking garage is straining to keep up as I type this...