Re: Home Intranets - was MP3 Whole House Audio

[Raymond <Reb.barnett@xxxxxxx>]

I tend to get sympathetic looks rather than outright declarations of
sadness! They soon shut up when they walk into our dining room at night
and the light comes on automatically though...

Your ideas for timers on the recipe are really exciting! I'm moving away
from the idea of touchscreen input (flat panel or CRT) because of
concern that in a kitchen whilst preparing food, grease and general
grime may be a problem - anyone with experience on that score? Instead
I'm thinking of using our Trackman Marble since we both like trackballs
(despite the fact they seem to phase everyone else completely) on the
basis this fairly invulnerable to dirt, and is fixed so shouldn't get
lost in the kitchen or require space to operate.

I spent a little time looking at development environments for an
intranet. I effectively have Visual Studio at my disposal. I looked at
IntraDev as the obvious choice, but couldn't fathom anything of it
inside of 10 minutes... J++ would be nice, but I don't have the time to
learn it. Access can convert forms to web pages, but I've looked at this
before and it's only really any good for simple data entry and enquiry
pages. VB can create user documents, but these are a bit of cheat since
you still need the VB runtimes on the client machines (hardly thin
client). I'm tending towards VB at the moment since that's my area of
expertise, and I control our house's IT strategy (!) so thin client
isn't really a problem or worry.

Anyone have any recommendations, experience or suggestions. I'd like to
give InterDev another go since I'm sure it must be good for something...

I also looked at MP3 encoding. I tried MusicMatch since it's free for
'nearly CD quality' encoding, and was very impressed. Simply insert a CD
and it retrieves all the album information then writes the CD directly
to MP3 format. It's music database can then be exported to tab
de-limited format for easy import to Access which then gives you:
filename of mp3 file, artist name, album name, track name, and music
type (classical etc). So far an MP3 jukebox is looking relatively
straightforward...


Ray.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: keith.doxey@xxxxxxx [mailto:keith.doxey@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 22 July 1999 22:52
> To: REB.Barnett@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [ukha_d] Re: Home Intranets - was MP3 Whole House Audio
>
>
> Hi Ray,
>
> I was mentioning my web databases to someone at work and when
> I mentioned a
> "Recipe" database I was told I was a sad person :-((
>
> Admittedly the CD and Video databases are a higher priority,
> as is getting
> some the material that I frequently use for reference scanned into
> electronic format and searchable.
>
> As you have said, it increases the wife acceptance factor if there is
> something to make her life easier. We have loads of cookery
> books in the
> cupboard but there are only a few recipies in each one that
> ever get used,
> and the one you want is always the last one you find. My wife
> also cuts
> articles out of magazines and puts them into a folder as well
> as looking at
> recipies on teletext. Using a TV card I can get the text straight off
> teletext with no typing ;-))
>
> Once entered into a database with certain keywords in the
> relevant fields
> you can look in the freezer or cupboard, find some
> ingredients and search
> for a recipe that fits the bill. You can also search for a
> particular type
> of cuisine etc.
>
> I havent done too much with Javascript yet but you can
> probably build a
> timer into a web page as well so that as you read the recipe
> and get to the
> stage of "put in oven for 30 minutes" you click the button
> and 30 minutes
> later a wav file plays to let you know the food is cooked and
> if you dont
> cancel the timer then 15 minutes later.....
>
> J:/JukeboxM/Move/Fire_Brigade.MP3
> or
> J:/JukeboxD/Deep_Purple/Smoke_On_The_Water.MP3
>
> ...starts to play over all the speakers in the house :-))
>
> Could possibly also be done with Active X to send Com Port
> messages to
> Homevision or whatever your HA system is built around.
>
> Add an address book database with all the details you would
> ever need,
> birthdays, anniversaries etc.
>
> Have your browser set up for your local intranet as the
> homepage with icons
> for
> Home Control, Music, Video, Recipies, Addresses, Favourite
> Web Sites etc.
>
> The biggest problem with a home intranet is the display used
> to show the
> pages. If using a TV as the display medium 640x480 is best as this is
> approximately the same as a TV picture although a good TV
> might manage
> 800x600. By choosing a suitable size font for YOUR INTRANET
> pages most of
> the problems associated with using VGA to PAL converters can
> be overcome.
> The full screen mode of Internet Explorer 5 is also a bonus
> as it maximises
> the viewing area of the screen. Most windows programs these
> days seem to
> take about 50% of a VGA screen just for the toolbars and stuff :-((
>
> This whole Automation/Intranet thing has so many
> possibilities, I just wish
> I could spend a lot more time experimenting. As you said in
> your message,
> maybe a modular HA/Intranet system could be developed by some
> of the people
> on this list. Many of us have specialised skills in one or
> more of the
> required areas, hardware, software, design etc.
>
> Looking forward to hopefully meeting some of you soon
>
> Keith
>
> Keith Doxey
> http://www.btinternet.com/~krazy.keith
> Krazy Keith's World of DIY Home Automation
>
>  I'm a keen full
> time VB/Access/SQL server developer whose only problem with doing this
> sort of thing is time. I've not written any 'proper' web
> interfaces/applications yet but I'm keen to learn, and I believe
> VB/Access/ASP makes this easy.
>
> I can sell the idea to Kate (wife) if I incorporate recipe
> functionality
> in the system too - we had the idea a while ago that if you could
> download loyalty card information detailing what you had bought, a web
> browser in the kitchen could suggest recipes... I've not kept up with
> Tescos, but I know that someone is doing something along similar lines
> using PalmPilots and barcode scanners.
>
> Maybe this would be a good topic for discussion at a
> mini-meeting - the
> project is potentially large enough in scope to justify being
> a modular
> ASP/Access development that a number of people could contribute to? A
> deadline in the form of a meeting might help focus my development
> efforts too...
>
>
>
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