RE: What bedside clock for a HA-er?

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Indeed. There's no doubt that a PC based solution would easily have
the best flexibility by far, both in terms of processing power, interface
choice, input feeds from other sources, integration with all the other HA,
etc. etc.

But it does have some significant downsides, such as power consumption,
hardware requirements, the amount of work required to design, customise
& implement the whole thing (it's by no means "out of the
box"), and not least the concerns over reliability.

If you run a CF card instead of a HDD, what OS do you run? - I'm guessing
it's not any flavour of Windows on that hardware... - therein lies another
pitfall; - I only know Windows OS's to the degree that would be necessary
to get a complete system up & running, and I don't have the time, (or
the inclination) to learn *nix just so I can get a better alarm clock! -
I'm not knocking it, it's just not for me....

I have a built-in "box" headboard with room inside to house a
full-size PC, so a flash case isn't a problem (nor for that matter is
having a small case, or indeed any case at all). My main concern is with
the visible parts, I don't particularly want (and SWMBO would not allow)
something that is overtly "PC like" at the side of the bed, nor
do I think a laptop on the bedside table is an aesthetically pleasing
arrangement. So I'd only want something small, and convenient "up
top" - I may just get away with a wee touchscreen, provided it's on
the smaller side of wee!

The idea does have potential, but there are some gotchas to look out
for....

Paul G.


________________________________

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx on behalf of Kim Wall
Sent: Tue 07/11/2006 19:07
To: UKHA_D Group
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] What bedside clock for a HA-er?



Paul Gordon wrote:
> Now that I have more or less expunged X10 from my home, I no longer
need
> the X10 mini-timer as my bedside clock, so I'm looking for a
"suitable"
> replacement..

Old laptop?

We've got a PII laptop by the bed with a 512meg CF card in place of a HD
so that it runs totally silently (unless made to do something CPU
intensive, which practically never happens).  We mostly use it for an
IRC client on one of the virtual consoles (what HA we have has an IRC
bot interface), the odd ssh session to check email, and Firefox in X for
those late-night random conversations that can only be resolved by a
quick check of googlepedia.

The laptop doesn't actually do alarm clock duty itself (we already had
the vibrating alarm clock from hell in a slightly more accessible
place), but there's no reason why it couldn't.  I used 'at' and 'mpg123'
as an alarm clock for a while when I was at university, and I expect
there are alarm clock plugins for popular media players.


Kim.


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