Barcode scanner on wastebasket

Post by **Snelvuur** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:37 pm

so what is this "module" is this your own "program" ?

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **RDNZL** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:45 pm

it's part of my own program
written in gambas running on linux

first beta version soon to be released...

Post by **TANE** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:03 am

Nice interface.

This can be a cool interface for the next version of Homeseer..

Post by **Snelvuur** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:05 am

RDNZL: i must say, i'am impressed by the look of it allready, it seems you allready have x10 and rfxcom support and all the other things a normal person wants..

any release "date"? i'am willing to test stuff if needed..

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **RDNZL** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:01 am

Erik:

"things a normal person wants..", no kidding, are there any normal people here? I only see 'power saving control freaks' here

the current program is a stand-alone program meaning, single user...
It's fetching values AND supplying an GUI to the user.
This is because I started developing it as a proof of concept, if it could support the interfaces I have.. got a bit out of hand...

It stores all of it data and settings inside a MySQL database, so taking it apart is do-able.
I think it does a good job already, I'm a bit impressed myself, programming with Gambas is really nice!
It's a bit like a poor man's home automation program in its current state, so no web interface, well there is a very minimal web server build in, but creating a web portal like Bwired's is a long way, because thats not what I wanted to create at first...
I'm trying to understand the xml-rpc component of Gambas, so i can let a server and client module(s) communicate directly with each other.
But docs are hard to find about that part.

Aside from the bugs it surely contains, and a bare minimum of error checking, 2 parts are still to be developed.

one is the CTX35 read part, it receives the raw ASCII already, but the decode part is not finished yet.
writing/controlling X10/A10 devices works though (lights/appliances)
I know you understand how to write that one, since you made xpl-ctx35

the second part is writing an event/action controller which stores it's rules in the database, including a GUI to define them(the easy part), now I only have hard coded events like:

Code: Select all

    ' mail list of devices with low battery
    IF Main.Time_Now("00:05") THEN
      Devices.MailBatteryStatus()
    END IF

    ' control the porch light
    IF Main.Time_Now("19:45") THEN 
      Devices.SetDevice("Porch Light", "On")
    END IF

    ' generate plant watering messages
    IF Main.Time_Cron("30 12,16,18 * * 0") THEN
      VoiceText.Speak("Your plants want to be watered. They gave me the following message: " & Main.Random_Text("remarks_plants"))
    END IF

But most of the drivers/serial/tcp routines are working ok already.

I'm fixing some small things and then let a few people (who offered them self already) try to get it running on their system

, I can include you if you want.
I think about a week or two as a time frame.. I need some help here, it's too much to code myself...

Enver:
homeseer can borrow ideas about interface layout (I did too from others), but since the program is GPLed I don't want no commercial company selling any bit of it... I don't think it's capable of measuring against commercial programs out there, but I saw what Home Automation Europe did with their HCB ... (note the missing smiley)

Regards,
Ron

Post by **Digit** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:33 am

Cool, really very cool. I won't show you my GUI; [:o)] it's just a form with 7 buttons to enable/disable subsystems; that's it. And some forms to manipulate 'stamgegevens' whom i rarely use anymore. I would like to share ideas about event/action processing however; maybe start another thread on that? (very far offtopic)

Post by **Alexander** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:55 pm

Indeed, very far offtopic

I think you guys overlooked my post with the post of RDNZL

Post by **RDNZL** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:29 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by mgizmo
 Indeed, very far offtopic

I think you guys overlooked my post with the post of RDNZL

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">My post was about barcode scanning to begin with

But we start a new forum soon in the Software section, so it's your show again

Developing DomotiGa - Gambas powered Domotics.

Post by **Alexander** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:50 pm

I know. no problem. Don't meant it that way.

Post by **DJF3** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:02 am

My 2 cents:
You probably could scan 95% of your food. For the other stuff that doesn't have bar-codes (like bread, meat from the butcher, etc) you could create a single sheet that contains the missing bar-codes.

This sheet could also contain:
- Numbers (if you add more than 1 product)
- Dates for THT

So if you add 3 cans of tomato soup with THT Dec-14 you would:
- Scan tomato soup
- Scan 3 (amount)
- Scan 30 days (THT approx 30 days from now)
( a bit like the good old Panasonic VCR's that you could program using barcodes, it had like a barcode cheat-sheet).

One idea I like is a central database OR a central database that anyone can sync with their own DB.

Cheers
DJ

Post by **nefreyu** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 10:28 pm

Cool idea, I've been working on the same thing, however I also was not prepared to enter the information for every single barcode, way to much work

A shared approach could definitely work, I can set up a web service quite easily to share this stuff if there are some interested parties?

(just hope that there will be some 'ah' customers (grocery store in the netherlands) that will save a lot of the typing on homebrand articles

)

So who would be interested? and should I write the webservice or is somebody already busy with an implementation of sorts? (I have a co-located server in Amsterdam, so availability should be near perfect)

Post by **Snelvuur** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 11:46 pm

nefreyu: http://nl.barcodepedia.com/ with some sort of feed would be nice.. problem is, i dont see a feed..

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **Alexander** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:05 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by nefreyu
So who would be interested? and should I write the webservice or is somebody already busy with an implementation of sorts? (I have a co-located server in Amsterdam, so availability should be near perfect)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I'm not a dev'er, but have developed in Delphi and see friends program in C#. So i do have the feeling, but not the time to learn the C#. So that would be very helpfull.
As you I've a co-located server in Amsterdam (business reasons, not personal) and a 50 Mbit fiber to the home. So the uptime isn't the issue, now a backend (webservice) and a frontend

I've already written my ideas in the topic. Agree on something like this?

Post by **nefreyu** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:05 pm

It looks really easy to write a webservice that uses the http://nl.barcodepedia.com website as a backend, I'm not sure as to how the owners of the site would like that, however, they have an API on their wishlist, so maybe not so bad.

So for a webservice the contract would be something like:

info_request:
-> barcode
<- status [found|notfound]
<- name
<- description
<- ingredients

info_update:
-> barcode
-> name
-> description
-> ingredients
<- status [ok|failed]

for easy integration probably SOAP is the easiest, most languages can consume simple soap services native.

Post by **Snelvuur** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:51 pm

ask the barcodepedia guys if you can write a simple api.. or better yet, ask if they still intend to go further with barcodepedia since it looks a bit dead (besides the few people that put in barcodes)

// Erik (binkey.nl)