Webbrick

["Mark Harrison (Groups)" <mph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I played with one for the first time today.

Rather interesting thing it is too. For about a third of the price of a
HomeVision you get as much digital I/O, inputs for a temperature sensor,
a rotary encoder, and another analogue device, plus a couple of analogue
outputs.... and, and this is key, an ethernet port. To be fair,
HomeVision allows a bit more in the world of what it can do without a PC
attached, but even were they the same price, this would have to be
balanced against the WebBricks native ethernet support.

As is, it comes with PHP and Python libraries. I've seen the "sample
application" that parses the XML the WebBrick outputs and turns it
into
a "prettier" webpage than the embedded one.

So, why would you use a WebBrick ? Well, pretty much all the reasons
that you'd use a HomeVision. Embedded control so it still works on its
own rather than relying on a PC. Add its network capability and take
into account its price, and you've got a board that lets you automate a
room at a time secure in the knowledge that if you need more than one
they'll babble to each other quite happily.

I think it's going to be very useful indeed. I'll try to report back in
a few weeks :-)

Mark