Newbie Questions - Home Automation Interface

[wayner]

I want to develop an addin to be able to control my home automation system, made by Control4, through Sage including extenders.

As a proof-of-concept I want to create a screen with some simple buttons that will toggle some of my lights. When the button is pressed it would send a simple http command which is very similar to the commands used by the Sage Web server remote control. An example of this command is http://C4server/cgi/c4control.cgi?co...glelight&id=25 . I am assuming that I could do this through a batch file using curl or netcat or something similar or there may even by better ways.

Can anyone point me in the right direction for an example of something similar.

Is Studio the right tool to be using for this stuff?

[MitchSchaft]

I wonder what happened to the guy who was gonna do the same for mControl.

[GKusnick]

Studio is the right tool for creating screens with buttons on them in SageTV. The best place to start learning how to do that is the Studio manual and tutorials. (See the Studio Information Resources sticky.)

There are no built-in HTTP methods in the SageTV API; however you can call Java runtime APIs, or run external command-line tools using the ExecuteProcess() API method.

[wayner]

Thanks Greg - can you think of anything similar that someone else has written that would get me started. I find that I learn best by looking at examples.

[GKusnick]

The tutorials walk you through simple examples of every major Studio feature. That would be the place to start. Beyond that, the Downloads section of the forum is full of working examples of add-ons people have written, some simple, some complex, including some related to home automation. (I don't use any HA add-ons myself, so I have no specific recommendations there.)

[wayner]

I looked in the STVi section of the downloads and I didn't see anything that looked applicable - I just checked out the External Plugins and Utilities and found some stuff there including a CQC app. I was thinking that this would be a STVi.

[sic0048]

The CQC app was designed to expose the Sage functionality to the automation system and allow it to control the SageTV system. What you are desiring is the opposite - you want to expose the automation system controls to SageTV and use the SageTV GUI to control you automation system. I know that type of functionality is not available in the CQC program.

You might drop Fonceur a line and see if he has any suggestions, but I know that was more than he was willing to bite off at the time he wrote the CQC program.

[CollinR]

The HAL plugin I use and it's fine by me although no CQC interface by any means. I use an ocelot as my primary control but have HAL setup as well just because there is a SageTV plugin for it.