STV Import: HAL Home Automation

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by Bohica

Thanks -- didn't catch that. Fixed. I would assume this would only work WELL with the default STV... I haven't had a look at SageMC in a while... the halMenu and the other menus are inclusive and should work with little to no modification. The problem would be trying to match the theme... and I dont use SageMC...

Yeah, it would be cool to have it in SageMC, but I'm affraid that mlbdude has taken a little break, due to work taking his time...no one has officially taken it over yet, while he is busy...

[Bohica]

What do all you guys do for other plugins then? Dont the setup and some other internal screens still use the standard theme in SageMC? I would not be that big of a deal to link this differently for SageMC. Let me get it stable first and I might take a look

[jelder]

Other than the voicemail playback function. Can somebody confirm that this works with MVP clients. Will playback of voicemail be possible over the MVP in the future?

This is probably a better question for the HAL forums, but I am sure many people will be interested here. How do you recommend getting started with HAL. Buy the HALdeluxe package? HAL2000 voice package inorder to get the caller ID and voicemail? Buy just the software and then the controller separate?

Thanks, this is very exciting.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by jelder

Other than the voicemail playback function. Can somebody confirm that this works with MVP clients. Will playback of voicemail be possible over the MVP in the future?

I dont use the MVPs myself -- but it is my limited understanding that it simply runs your choice of STV (XML) from the server correct? If this is the case, it will work fine. Each instance of an STV launched with this plugin starts a java service in the background that maintains a state table from HAL through the network. If you run it on the server -- it will just communicate to localhost through the loopback. My guess would be that if you have several MVPs -- each one will start an instance of the STV on the server -- and each one will start an instance of this background state service. It is not very heavy -- so it should be fine. Maybe someone more familiar with MVPs could chime in...

Originally Posted by jelder

This is probably a better question for the HAL forums, but I am sure many people will be interested here. How do you recommend getting started with HAL. Buy the HALdeluxe package? HAL2000 voice package inorder to get the caller ID and voicemail? Buy just the software and then the controller separate?

This is a much harder question -- because you may really be asking how do I start my Home Automation project. HAL is but one of a handful of packages out there. I dont want to hijack this thread discussing others, but HAL is one of the leaders, along with others like HomeSeer... I chose HAL more than a year ago for it's voice capabilities, its voicemodem and voicemail, it's internal scripting, etc. None of those features today are unavailable in other packages... so it may be time to look around and judge again. For me I am very supportive of the product... YMMV. Most importantly however -- the software you choose to buy is not the expensive part of the project. That would be replaceing all of your switches, the time and effort in tuning it, etc...

Now if you are well into your HA project and I read that wrong... and you just want to know about HAL... sorry Just download the demo -- it gives you 30 days I think. You dont need the voicemodem to test it out. If you dont have the voicemodem, those functions will not even show up in the plugin... You will need a powerline adapter -- which you can buy from automatedliving... or from Smarthome... etc. Check out which models are supported by HAL and then look around on the net at smarthome and AL, or the distributor of your choice. If you plan on buying the software, the bundles might save you a little money. The modems are available from other retailers as well...

Hope that helped...

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Crashless

I'm really excited about this plugin, great work on it.

Now I have to take another look at my HA setup...good thing I'm going to have some time off soon.

Thanks crashless... my feet are wet... consider me in this little studio club...

Cheers...

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by Bohica

Thanks crashless... my feet are wet... consider me in this little studio club...

Cheers...

Oh, you're most definitely in the club.

[jryan15]

will the caller id services work with voice over internet such as Vonage?

[Morgan111]

Bohica, do you see the possibility of your HALiTS service being able to remotely communicate with the HAL server using the microphone and speaker of a Sage Client (and multiple Sage Clients)?

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by jryan15

will the caller id services work with voice over internet such as Vonage?

The YAC caller-id works great for me with a caller ID compatible modem and my VoicePulse VOIP phone adapter. I would think that HAL operates pretty much the same with caller ID. The think I have trouble with is using a fax or modem on the VOIP telephone line

[geogecko]

This is cool stuff. I've been looking at the X10 stuff over at SmartHome, to get a good idea of what can be done. Looks promising, at least to start poking around with.

Some questions I had though. It looks like you have a pretty good interface going already. Is there any way to add HAL commands (such as modes) to some of the other SageTV menu items? Like for instance, the following:

When someone wants to play a DVD, and they just go to Play DVD on the SageTV main menu, the HAL settings would be:
Living room lights dim to 20%
Living room lamp a off
Living room lamp b off
Kitchen lights off

Then say the same person paused the DVD to go do something, on the pause action:
Living room lights 80%
Living room lamp a off
Living room lamp b off
Kitchen lights 80%

It could be the same for LiveTV or Recorded TV. Something different for music. I think that would be pretty tight, but I'm sure others might find it annoying. Depends on your setup, mainly.

BTW, (little OT, but), what happens say, if you have the computer controlled powerline module, but also an RF powerline control module, turning stuff on and off? Say for instance, you have both of the above, and have your landscape lights hooked up to the X10 system and HAL, via this SageTV Import, and you setup your vehicle HomeLink controller to one of the RF frequencies and channels, to turn on the landscape lights. Does the SageTV HAL interface get updated that they were turned on, even though it did not perform that action?

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by jryan15

will the caller id services work with voice over internet such as Vonage?

Yep - I use vonage. Anything that will work with HAL will work... most VOIP solutions will work the same way...

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Bohica, do you see the possibility of your HALiTS service being able to remotely communicate with the HAL server using the microphone and speaker of a Sage Client (and multiple Sage Clients)?

More than even what I have done to date - I want this exact thing. I have been thinking about this exact 'feature' for over a year with no easy solution. I have spent several hours looking into the possibility of making my own sound driver -- that would be installed on the HAL server, which would redirect output to a virtual sound card, and then send that over the net to the remote system... reversing for input. Sort of a pc based intercom if you will. I have found nothing... and have no easy thoughts on implementing something that would work...

Having said that -- I do plan on looking at the scheduling of HAL, including voice, and seeing if I can get HAL to a) send voice messages to be played through sage... or b) send text messages for reminders to be displayed in Sage... or c) both?? Maybe something I play with will help me get closer to making each sage a remote voice control for hal...

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by geogecko

When someone wants to play a DVD, and they just go to Play DVD on the SageTV main menu, the HAL settings would be:
Living room lights dim to 20%
Living room lamp a off
Living room lamp b off
Kitchen lights off

Rather than update this plugin to do this... which sort of duplicates HAL functionality... it would be nice (I dont know if I can do this...) to add Sage as a supported HAL device. What I mean by this -- the correct way for this sequence to take place... is for you to have defined a HAL rule saying **if living room Sage selects play DVD - execute macro DIM living room**

In essense, HAL would need to understand the state and the commands being entered into Sage. As this stands, my backend process is pulling information, and upon request setting (or controlling) things.

To answer your question - I could do that fairly easily... just probably not the correct way...

Originally Posted by geogecko

BTW, (little OT, but), what happens say, if you have the computer controlled powerline module, but also an RF powerline control module, turning stuff on and off? Say for instance, you have both of the above, and have your landscape lights hooked up to the X10 system and HAL, via this SageTV Import, and you setup your vehicle HomeLink controller to one of the RF frequencies and channels, to turn on the landscape lights. Does the SageTV HAL interface get updated that they were turned on, even though it did not perform that action?

I do maintain the state table in the background... so if you turn off the kitchen light, and then look at the kitchen light in sage... it will be off. More over -- if the kitchen light is on, and you then highlight that device in sage, then WALK over and turn off that light by hand... the lightbulb in sage will turn off. Took me a while in studio to figure out how best to do that...

[DFA]

Well, I am looking at getting in to this and using the newer, much better Insteon protocol instead of X10. My only pause was when I checked the price of HAL2000.

Not sure how I'm going to slip that one under the HTPC radar of hers.

DFA

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by DFA

Well, I am looking at getting in to this and using the newer, much better Insteon protocol instead of X10. My only pause (gulp, choke) was when I checked the price of HAL2000.

Not sure how I'm going to slip that one under the HTPC radar of hers.

DFA

Yeah, I was looking at that too, but there seems to be a lot more stuff on X10, than the Insteon, at least, ATM. There are such huge jumps in price from the Basic version of HAL...but it's good software.

Thanks Bohica for the answers. That last one was just what I was looking for.

On the other hand, as far as controlling a macro via what menu item you are in on Sage, I'll leave that up to you. I haven't bought anything yet...so. I could also use my Harmony remote to control the lights, just have to get an IR to RF converter (unless of course, HAL support taking commands from the USB-UIRT?!).

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by Bohica

What do all you guys do for other plugins then? Dont the setup and some other internal screens still use the standard theme in SageMC? I would not be that big of a deal to link this differently for SageMC. Let me get it stable first and I might take a look

I missed this post earlier, but as development stabalizes I would love to integrate this plugin to Meekell if it's okay with Bohica.

[mayamaniac]

Bohica, that is quite impressive, the amount of features you added.

All these stuffs seems really cool, but I'm afraid of the cost required to get started. Are there any figures I can use to calculate before I invest in this? What are the good sites to read more about this stuffs, especially the hardware part of it?

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by DFA

Well, I am looking at getting in to this and using the newer, much better Insteon protocol instead of X10. My only pause (gulp, choke) was when I checked the price of HAL2000.

Not sure how I'm going to slip that one under the HTPC radar of hers.

DFA

I can only give this advice... the investment in HA is NEVER worth it. You may make back your money in electric bills over time... but the effort IS the investment. This is about personal satisfaction. Nothing more. The cost of ANY software is NOT the cost to worry about. If you are spending 25 dollars on every switch (or 75 -- depends on what you want) ... shelling out a couple of hundred for whatever package is nothing to worry about...

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Crashless

I missed this post earlier, but as development stabalizes I would love to integrate this plugin to Meekell if it's okay with Bohica.

Crashless.. I will help where ever I can. Let me get stable here and I might even offer my help on your project. I hope I can get to a point where I can play elsewhere... I took a look at your STV. I want to spend more time with it ... but good work!

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by Bohica

Todo:

• Thermostat control is coming
• Security System control is coming
• Home Theatre Device control is already in this. I just do not show it. I dont use it. Can on request.
• Work on voicemail playback controls

Very nice work, Bohica! I have both SageTV and HAL Deluxe. However, both are still "sitting in the box" waiting for me to get some time to get everything up and running. I must say though that this has me very excited because I have both these products and am hoping to get Sage up and running this month (fingers crossed).

What I'm asking is that when you do get the time and work on the thermostat control to please keep us shift workers in mind! I have been looking for solutions to control my thermostat but EVERY thing I've ever seen assumes pretty much a 9 to 5 job with weekends off. I am single and work a 5 week rotation and go through all the shifts during this 5 week period and then start it all over again. If you could design your thermostat control to use a schedule that repeats on some frequency (rather than just a 9 to 5 with weekends assumed at home) that would be GREAT!

One example I can give that works well for a shift worker when inputting his/her schedule is Microsoft Outlook and the recurring "appointments". Here is a copy and paste of one of the occurrences for the 1st week in my 5 week rotation: "Occurs every 5 weeks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday effective 8/29/2005 from 07:00 to 17:00"

I have no clue how you were going to setup thermostat control. You may just be talking about being able to manually adjust it with the remote and that's it. But, if you had just a little bit of an idea to allow actually setting up the thermostat to control based on some schedule, I would be forever grateful if you'd at least look into allowing a bit of flexibility in the scheduling to account for us shift workers. There are a lot of shift workers out there and I have yet to find an off the shelf electronic thermostat or even a home automation program (have looked at some but obviously not familiar with all) that takes into consideration a shift worker and his messed up schedule! They all allow you to control the thermostat differently Mon-Sun for a week at a time but a shiftworker needs to be able to set up different settings over, in my case, a 5 week period that might be different each day during the 5 week period but then exactly repeat themselves once week 6 starts (week 1 again). Confused? LOL!

If you don't or can't do any of this then I'm still grateful for what you have provided just with this.

Thanks!!!