Introduction

[yahoo@xxxxxxx]

Morning all,

Let this be considered my introductory email to the group. My last task
on todays todo list. And a case of excessive late night typing :)

I am Steev, long-time HA dreamer, who's recently (last 6 months) finally
got down to some HA work. I've wired up an AV loom (42 strand cable to
all rooms, except bathroom & kitchen at present), and dual CAT5 sockets
to
those rooms.

There's a basic AV backbone between upstairs & down with a
stereo audio & composite video for upstream & downstream
communications
(I know c-video is poor quality, but I don't have high quality video
equipment, and plan on using CAT5 as my primary route of pumping signals
around, probably with the new HauppaugeMVP).

There's also a minimal X10 setup for lighting. This is to be expanded.
As is the IR, currently only available for input to the computer. I'm
also gonna move the TV distribution amp to the loft when I'm confident
that after cutting the aerial cable I can reconnect it into the sockets
properly!

My main focus is centralised control[0] and monitoring. I have my Linux box
being able to control the CD player, TV & Radio through a web page.
Which, despite the fact each piece of hardware is actually _inside_ the
computer looks cool. Especially when you tell someone at work you've just
switched the radio on - at home :) I've also set up an email account so
it's
possible to email my video (technically mencoder, running on the command
line, but who's to know!).

I'm currently working on the software architecture to abstract the low
level web side into a more useful interface. When complete, the email
input 'conduits' (like email & web server) will be totally separate
from the
device conduits (tv, radio, cd) allowing me to set the video from the
web, and get an email confirmation back. And so on. Most of my ideas are
software based.


Outside of HA, I'm a games programmer (yes, another one!), HTML monkey,
musician, writer (Linux Magazine) and general dabbler in all things that
interest me ;)

But that's enough of me... what about you guys? How are you?

Steev

[0] as in the computer does all the controlling, and collates all
monitored data before passing it on. The inputs however that issue the
controlling requests, however, can be anywhere: local or remote.