MSN Messanger as home control interface anyone?

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

Hi chaps,

I've been thinking about using MSN Instant Messanger as an interface to
control my HA server. To which end, I've registered a new Hotmail passport
account for my server, and installed the MSN messanger client. I've added
my
HA server to MY messanger contacts list, and added ME to my HA servers'
contact list. So now I can hold an IM conversation between my HA server,
and
myself, wherever I happen to be in the world.

The idea being that it is so much faster than an email interface (which I
already have thanks to Homeseer), and of course there is the instant
feedback available as well. - Also, it could be a handy indication of the
state of the HA server - just check the status of my IM contacts, and if
the
HA server is not online for MSN Messanging, then I know something is
wrong...

The next bit I need to do is to create the agent on the server end that
will
listen to the messanger client for incoming messages and do the smart
bit...
(oh is that all?). I've had a look at the Messanger object model and
interface API, and I don't think that's going to be particularly tricky..

My HA server runs Homeseer, but I don't want the agent to be a Homeseer
script - it would need to run all the time, and I prefer not to turn off
the
script timeout setting, so I'm envisaging that the agent will be a small VB
app, that will be a COM "middleman" between MSN Messanger and
Homeseer, and
probably do little more than call a Homeseer script whenever an inbound
message arrives, and pass the message text to it. - then all the action can
take place in a homeseer script which makes the whole thing more flexible.

To get to the point, I'm looking for:

a) Offers of help with programming the VB part, - I'm only a (very) amateur
VB coder!

b) Offers of help with programming the Homeseer script part,

c) Suggestions & ideas for what kind of things could be controlled -
and
How!

I'm guessing that some kind of rudimentary protocol will need to be
defined,
as messanger will be providing free-form text that will need to be parsed
by
the VB script, so to code for parsing that text will require some rules
about the text format, so I'm currently thinking along the lines of
"COMMAND:ARGUMENT" similar to the following:

"SPEAK:a string of text" - Homeseer will speak the given text
string
"CALL:a homeseer script name" - Homeseer will execute the named
script
"X10:<devicecode> <function>" (Example: "X10:A1
off") - obvious enough?
"STATUS" - Homeseer will report back various status information.

Homeseer would send back a confirmation message for every command received,
and I also envisage that homeseer would be able to instigate an outgoing
conversation with me as well, if there is something it needs to report..

I envisage a conversation going along the lines of:

Paul Gordon Says:
STATUS
Paul's HA server says:
Security system is armed to away mode
The internal temperature is 16 degrees
The heating system is off
There have been 3 visitors to the front door so far today,
There are no new messages waiting.
Paul Gordon Says:
CALL:heating_on.txt
Paul's HA server says:
Script: heating_on.txt executing
Paul Gordon Says:
X10:C5 ON
Paul's HA server says:
X10 command C5 (Immersion Heater) ON has been sent.
Paul Gordon Says:
whoogoahoomphdamumph
Paul's HA server says:
Command not recognised, type HELP for list of available commands.


Now I know you could say why use IM when you could just use the Homeseer
web
interface, but personally, I think this would be pretty cool! - any
comments/thoughts/ideas?

Cheers.

Paul G.




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