What Linux software are you guys using?

Post by **rickk** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:02 am

So... what software are the Linux people over here using for Home Automation? I'm just starting out (and already hooked

) and I'm wondering what way to go.

I've currently played with Heyu and Misterhouse. Heyu appears to be pretty solid and well-documented, but for my intentions will probably require a lot of ugly "houtje-touwtje" constructions with a dozen of scripts.

Misterhouse looks like a lot of ugly "houtje-touwtje" constructions already, has very poor documentation and doesn't work too well with my S10 dimmer modules already. Furthermore it comes with lots of stuff I don't care about entangled in the whole program and a confusing webinterface. On the plus side, it's all perl in which I know my way around. Also, I like the "LOMP" strategy a lot. But if I were to go for Misterhouse, it'll probably require a hefty amount of weeding through the code and stripping it all down to make it acceptable for me.

I haven't looked at ZenAH yet, but so far it appears there's 0 documentation and only a little support, so I haven't even got a clue what it currently does

Ofcourse I could roll my own from scratch, but I dread dealing with the lowlevel stuff (interfacing with the CM11, rfxcom, taking care of floods, loops, and all kinds of error conditions, etc.) so I'd rather start out with something existing.

So... what are you guys using?
- Rick

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:13 pm

I'am trying to get more documentation on zenah, since i'am busy trying it out. The underlying factor xpl-perl is more documentated, and does it work well. Instead of "houwtje touwtje" the xpl idea is to have a daemon for each application you have. This will keep you the owner only with the daemons you want instead of having to integrate everything you wont be using anyway. Also it allows an easy way to let any application talk directly to another application. Zenah is suppose to make the strings from above

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **MindBender** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:40 pm

Hi Rick(k). I'm using OpenSuse 10.2 on a VIA EPIA board with a 1GHz Nemiah processor, 512MiB of RAM and a 8GiB CompactFlash card as a 'harddisk'.
I was charmed by the Project WISH approach to interface with X10, but it appears to be vaporware: A silent mailing list except for the bi-annual a post of a newby asking a question, which is never answered. Though if you consider using it; There's a bug in it and I can tell you how to fix it.
I have decided to write my own CM-11 driver because there's no real good implementation that offers extended frames. While doing so I stumbled upon a limitation of the CM-11; It's internal receive buffer is too small to hold two extended frames, resulting in lost frames. So I'm still looking for an alternative. And if I need to buy a new interface anyway, I'd rather buy one that better supported by Linux. And if possible: One that screams a little louder on the mains

Post by **rickk** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:42 pm

Currently playing around with xpl-perl, it's starting to grow on me although I don't like the heyu-x10 "solution" very much. However, due to the highly modular nature it should be enough to get going, and replace it with something better when it comes along/I write it myself. It could be a pretty elegant solution and I can also see some possibilities to throw my MythTV setup in the mix using this.

Are you happy with the stability and performance of your setup using xpl?

Also managed to install half the million perl modules ZenAH requires and still haven't got a clue what it's supposed to do, the only thing it currently feeds me are nicely formatted 403 errors.

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:59 pm

hehe, well xpl-perl modules itself are pretty stable, but i use runit (or daemontools) see http://wiki.binkey.nl/XPL-perl for my documentation so far. Which restarts processes that died. So far i have not seen any that die, or its just really rare it restarts. There is also a small piece on zenah, but to really have it easy you need debian

If you have any questions on zenah, let me know i'll try and help out or on xpl-perl where i can.

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **rickk** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:13 pm

Well, for now ZenAH returns the error "Couldn't render template "file error - site/error: not found", and all details on the request and response below. Apparently it just doesn't know what to display... From what I get from it, it'll generate the pages from the database, right? Oh, and I just followed what was in the readme / your wiki.

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:35 pm

did you also use the sample.db ? you have to rename it to sample.db or something.. otherwise its still empty

i think this is also in the readme of zenah. Dont know what happens if you dont use any though, but try that first. Tell me if it made a difference.

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **rickk** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:41 pm

Yes I did everything per the README.. If you don't copy the database it just bombs out btw.

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:54 pm

And you started both processes? And no other errors during startup? Or from the webserver end?

// Erik (binkey.nl)

Post by **rickk** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:06 pm

Nope.. everything starts up fine, looking good. Only when I do an HTTP request I see:

ZenAH::Template: can't find: site/error
[info] *** Request 1 (0.024/s) [31689] [Tue Sep 18 17:05:32 2007] ***
[debug] "GET" request for "/" from "194.134.32.54"
[debug] Rendering template "html/layout"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - site/error: not found"
[debug] Rendering template "html/layout"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - html/layout: not found"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - site/error: not found"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - html/layout: not found"
[info] Request took 0.655174s (1.526/s)

Which is essentially the same as the browser displays me.

Post by **Willem4ever** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:04 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by rickk
 So... what software are the Linux people over here using for Home Automation? I'm just starting out (and already hooked

) and I'm wondering what way to go.

I've currently played with Heyu and Misterhouse. Heyu appears to be pretty solid and well-documented, but for my intentions will probably require a lot of ugly "houtje-touwtje" constructions with a dozen of scripts.

Misterhouse looks like a lot of ugly "houtje-touwtje" constructions already, has very poor documentation and doesn't work too well with my S10 dimmer modules already. Furthermore it comes with lots of stuff I don't care about entangled in the whole program and a confusing webinterface. On the plus side, it's all perl in which I know my way around. Also, I like the "LOMP" strategy a lot. But if I were to go for Misterhouse, it'll probably require a hefty amount of weeding through the code and stripping it all down to make it acceptable for me.

I haven't looked at ZenAH yet, but so far it appears there's 0 documentation and only a little support, so I haven't even got a clue what it currently does

Ofcourse I could roll my own from scratch, but I dread dealing with the lowlevel stuff (interfacing with the CM11, rfxcom, taking care of floods, loops, and all kinds of error conditions, etc.) so I'd rather start out with something existing.

So... what are you guys using?
- Rick
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I'm using HomeDaemon for X10 control, documentation is reasonable, and source is available.

Post by **beanz** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:04 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by rickk
 Nope.. everything starts up fine, looking good. Only when I do an HTTP request I see:

ZenAH::Template: can't find: site/error
[info] *** Request 1 (0.024/s) [31689] [Tue Sep 18 17:05:32 2007] ***
[debug] "GET" request for "/" from "194.134.32.54"
[debug] Rendering template "html/layout"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - site/error: not found"
[debug] Rendering template "html/layout"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - html/layout: not found"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - site/error: not found"
[error] Couldn't render template "file error - html/layout: not found"
[info] Request took 0.655174s (1.526/s)

Which is essentially the same as the browser displays me.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Can you show me the output of the "perl Makefile.PL" step? Apologies for the lack of documentation and the fact that the dependencies are only simple to install on Debian but remember it is not actually released yet and you just pulled my development version from subversion! That said feedback is much appreciated and I am trying to add more documentation to the wiki. (Though I have other priorities like my 10-month-old son and testing new gadgets like the excellent RFXCOM transmitter I received today.)

What don't you like about the heyu x10 solution? It wasn't my first choice when I started looking at this stuff but I used it because it got things going quickly. Now I think it is a very good choice because it hides much of the (very significant amount of) complexity, supports a wide range of interfaces and is mature/well-tested.

Regards,
Mark.

Post by **beanz** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:13 pm

Another thing that would be useful to know is the svn revision you have ("svn info |grep Rev"). I'd also point out that I'm still making a few changes to the database structure so you will need to make sure any changes to the zenah.sample.db are copied to the live zenah.db.

-Mark.

Post by **beanz** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:25 pm

I've just checked in a ".dump" of the zenah.sample.db file. If you remove the zenah.db file and recreate it with:

svn up
sqlite3 zenah.db <zenah.sample.sql3

does that help? (Perhaps checking in a binary sqlite file was a bad idea. I've since discovered that they don't tend to be very portable between sqlite versions.)

Regards,
Mark.

Post by **rickk** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:00 am

Hi Mark,

At first glance (this morning during breakfast), the new DB didn't change a thing , although the resulting .db file is about 25k smaller.
I'll e-mail you the output of perl Makefile.PL.

What I don't like about the heyu solution is merely theoretical, that calling binaries from perl programs isn't that clean (although UNIX has survived doing just that for decades

), ideally you'd have heyu talking xPL itself. But I agree with you about that heyu in itself is a robust solution for talking to the CM11.

Cheers,
Rick

P.S. Just got an RFXCom myself yesterday - works fine with the xpl-rfxcom module although I now need to figure out how to translate the Visonic signals.