My Latest Cool DIY Automation FACT

["IVB" <ivb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a Cingular 8125 PDA cellphone that I got primarily for work purposes,
but secondarily to control/monitor the house while I'm away.  Had some
RAGING success yesterday, chalk this ability up as a fact.

Wife & I had a last minute out-of-town trip to Napa Valley as wife's folks
were willing to watch kids. I already had Security & HVAC control setup via
the PDA [monitor motion sensors, check security system, adjust HVAC while
we're not in the house]. I added some A/V screens so I could control the A/V
equipment and start DVDs, as they constantly struggle with anything remotely
technical, especially if they're trying to watch the kids at the same time.

Here's the latest set of interfaces I made for it, had some pretty good luck
with them. That said, I'm going to create a high-bandwidth set and
low-bandwidth set and create a new top-level menu having you pick one or the
other, as I only got 5-10kbps over Cingular's EDGE network while in Napa
yesterday, and some of these are nearly 200K. They were fine from the coffee
shops with free wifi, but about 40 seconds per page load time from the movie
theater.  I kicked off a DVD for the inlaws so they didn't have to deal with
anything other than turning TV on. Considering that I won't use this that
often, 20 seconds is "ok", but i'd like to see if I can at least create
security ones that load within 5-7 seconds.

Obviously these need some serious GUI work - the napa trip was a total last
minute thing, so the A/V ones are what I whipped together in <60 minutes.

BTW, these use CQC's DotNetViewer which directly hits the CQC XML Gateway
server in my house, so I don't need logmein.com, and so no unnecessary
software or security holes.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_Home.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_AVEquipment.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_AVSources.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_DVD.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_XM.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_Elk.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_Motion.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/PPC/PPC_HVAC.jpg

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Note: I am a mere end-user with no financial stake in any products that I
may discuss.

My Personal Website w/my Home Automation PC:
http://www.myhomeautomationpc.com, last updated 4/11

My Home Automation Blog: http://homeautomation.wordpress.com/