| Project will be x10 control of house & reeftanks with web & java front ends, for the custom tank hardware, and the x10 gateway (x11a's), with USB temp, ph, orp, and ca probes for the fishtanks. Touchscreens in the wall at the tanks for local control, and at the entryway for house control using X11A controllers, and 2 handheld that double as a webpads, they will use x17a controllers. This is a long term project, I currently have x11a's and x10, and the 1200's acting as webpads, with wireless homefree (crappy diamond wireless card). In my current house I have a security system, but after looking at how it's setup, I'm not impressed, the one thing they do have, that I need is monitoring & automatically phoneing the police. I'll probably go the same route, a leased security system, but I'll be adding either USB webcams on the entryway touchpad, or X10 remote cameras for monitoring, along with some of the x10 motion detector's.
I'm switching to 802.11b wireless as soon as I get all moved, hoping they start to fall in price now that they are insecure, I'll use HTTPS to keep the network locked down. I'm also looking at hacking a couple gateway webpads, but when I price out hacking any of the current touchscreen thin clients, the cost of hardware (drives & cables) quickly exceeds the price of these low power pads, the Cf-01 or stylistic's, or the ricoh.
X10 is suprisingly cheap to impliment, the only real cost will be the tank hardware & usb probes, I may skip the tank hardware and dedicate a webpad to control, but I'll have to write the software myself if I go this route, that part of the setup would definitly be bi-directional x10, I do need to come up with a DIY water detector, we have these under the computerroom floors, but they just sound an alarm, I need my touchpad to react to the sensor's short, and turn off pumps to prevent further flooding.
I've got 12 months to fully design and prototype everything, signed a 12 month lease on appartment while I move to the midwest. I've not seen any viable alternatives to x10 as far as cost & ease of implimentation. My current house had 1/2 the system I describe, not fully automated, and off the shelf tank monitors.
I currently run a citrix server, I did think of using a truely thin client with bootp, but then I have to rip up walls to run the network, not something I really want to do, and this setup is modular, costing a little more, but easier to impliment & change. I've got 5-6 months before I really start hardware purchases so I have plenty of time to hash out the pros/cons of each, I dont think the true thin clients will give me then x10 flexibility that I need, although they are so cheap I might use them as a upstairs controlpad or somthing similar.
L8r Matt | |
