My V0.1, and only 3 hours into learning Studio!

[IVB]

Some of you who visit avsforum know that I've been on a mission lately to find a better GUI/interaction mechanism with my HTPC setup, and to make it look attractive [but not too busy]. I don't know why, but it took until tonight for me to even realize that Studio could help me on the TV front.

I'm sure this is kindergarten-level stuff to some of you as I focused on the skin first and didn't bother actually adding any functionality. Still though, I thought this was pretty cool, esp given that I've only got 3 hours of time with Studio under my belt.

Here's the TV shot. I'll only include the main menu as that's as far as I tested. It's also not totally done as I need to redo the menu flow, but first I need to figure out what I actually want to do.



Here's the other stuff that I'm trying to get it to match up with. You'll see that I've got a ways to go in Studio, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

[Lucas]

Very nice concept! This is what I am contemplating doing with my setup.

Have you actually integrated the lights, watering etc yet? How?

[IVB]

The watering isn't yet integrated - i've got a RAIN8 device that communicates bidirectionally via RS232 to the PC. It's relatively new (<1yr), and not very well supported by anyone, so I need to write a driver for it. Sounds harder than it is - if I had the time, it would take a week or so. Given that it's the holidays and I have 2 young kids and I really want to work on SageTV/Studio first, it'll probably take me 2 months :-)

I'm using CQC [www.charmedquark.com] for both the back-end communication/management of the devices required for all the other screens, as well as the front-end interface construction. It handles RS232, zWave, and X10.

For the temperature, I just bought an Aprilaire 8870 communicating thermostat. The CQC guys just came out with a driver to support it, so as soon as I have a few moments to run the wiring, it should work just fine.

Also, I haven't put lighting into the mix yet as it's not that big a deal for me.

Ok, off to learn more about Studio and the Sage API to see what else I can make this thing do!

[Bandit]

Wow, if you get this completely intergrated with X10 looks like I'll have to pimp out my house. Used to have a house I rented all wired but never did it when I bought this house, having it work with sage would just be awesome and make me want to spend hundreds of dollars on X10 equipment....hmmm...second thought, don't finish this, LOL

[IVB]

Heck, check out www.charmedquark.com now [go to the forums section] - there's X10 support right now. They're working on a Sage driver to have tighter integration so I can add my leftnav Denon control widgets to this too.

Personally, I'm skipping X10, going straight to zWave due to it's bidirectional nature so you can get status. I'm going to put in lighting support that way.

There's a newgen of zWave PC USB/serial controllers due out in March, so I'm holding off for that.

[insomniac]

im just holding out until zwave pricing leaves the "insane" category..

Originally Posted by IVB

Heck, check out www.charmedquark.com now [go to the forums section] - there's X10 support right now. They're working on a Sage driver to have tighter integration so I can add my leftnav Denon control widgets to this too.

Personally, I'm skipping X10, going straight to zWave due to it's bidirectional nature so you can get status. I'm going to put in lighting support that way.

There's a newgen of zWave PC USB/serial controllers due out in March, so I'm holding off for that.