Creation of a Home Automation Platform

["Brian Milton" <bmilton@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bram,

Sounds like a good project.  The only thing I taught might be nice is to
have a look at the xpl or xap protocols that are mentioned on this list
frequently.  They are quite useful in HA.  There are also yahoo groups for
these as well.  Maybe have a look at them and these sites.

http://www.xpl.myby.co.uk/
http://www.xapautomation.org/

I wouldn't mind having a look at your paper as well.  That's if I can get
my
friend to translate it. 70 pages!!  If I get it translated I'll let you
know.  My email is bmilton at bm-comp dot com.

Cheers

Brian

------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 21:56:31 +0200
From: Bram Biesbrouck <b@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Creation of a Home Automation Platform

Hello,

I'm a Belgian student, who is fascinated by home automation. As my final
year thesis/assignment (Computer Science at the University of Ghent), I
wrote an application platform to integrate several communication standards
and protocols (currently in Java, but I'll investigate a possible port to
C/C++ this summer). Currently, it works pretty well with Ethernet, WiFi,
Bluetooth and X10 (research for ZigBee, EIB and CBus is on it's way).
Future
research will mainly be concentrated around wireless protocols, though.

The transitions between the protocols are transparent for the platform and
I
made GUIs, a control-website, a mobile phone MIDlet, a 3D- interface and a
Bluetooth-hardware module (which controls a wall outlet with Bluetooth).
As a supporter of free and open source software, my ultimate goal is to
create a generic, modular and expandable open source platform for Home
Automation, that can cooperate with every possible HA-technology in the
world, so that the user doesn't have to choose between different
technologies. Instead, every single technology or protocol can be embedded
into the platform by means of protocol-dependent plugins with a common
interface to the platform (much like Linux-modules, maybe even real
Linux-modules).
I'm aware of several other similar technologies (Jini, UPnP, Salutation,
...), but none of them is specifically made or designed for HA-solutions. I
want to create a HA-network-technology that can adapt itself to the user,
instead of the other way around. Instead of renewing your HA technology
when
it is outdated, expand it with new technology and keep your "old"
configuration where it is still applicable; because of the platform, the
new
technology will always be compatible with the "old", and even
when it is
not, a simple software-update will be sufficient.

The current core-codebase is about 3000 lines of code, the different
side-codebases each around 800, all written in Java. All software is
written
under the GNU General Public License.

Please send me any thought, question, challenge, idea or feature-request
you
can think of. I will dedicate a website on it (where you will find the
code)
as soon as I find the time to create one. I already wrote a 70-pages paper
on the subject (in dutch), email me to get a copy.
(translators are welcome to translate it into English). I'm willing to fill
in or discuss any detail, problem or the like.


Bram Biesbrouck

PS: I probably made a whole lot of spelling- and grammar-errors, my
apologies in advance, English isn't my native language.