Recently I played with Plutohome which is based on Debian I found some strange thing with grep. When I tried to find the word ‘pluto’ in the directory /etc/init.d: grep -i pluto /etc/init.d/* -n I was very surprised when I saw error messages about missing files in this directory. It seems that grep under Debian uses locate to retrieve a list of files for specified […]
Plutohome 2.0.0.39 is out
Yesterday a new version of Plutohome – one of the best open source solution for building smart home was released. There are several principal updates related with Asterisk, Linux and SDL Orbiters, Bluetooth Dongle and hardware detection. The full change log can be found here. Unfortunatelly, I didn’t find any additionals or improvements of VDR integration. Hope I’ll be able to configure it on my […]
Extreamly mini PC
I found this mini PC when I read Plutohome support forum. This is Jack PC. It looks like a wall outlet but inside this miniature you can find: AMD Au1550 Alchemy processor, 500 MHz RISC (equivalent to 1.2 GHz x86TC Processor) RAM 128 MB DDR, 400 MHz Video – 1600×1200 16M (True Color) 10/100 Fast Ethernet, twisted pair (RJ-45) with Auto-negotiate 4 USB 2.0 compatible […]
High-tech Bathroom
Did somebody think how would look smart home if its control center move into bathroom? Sounds unbelievably? But have a look at the batchroom Type-A: Many Type-A bathrooms are showing up in high-end “smart homes,” which feature computer systems that let homeowners control music, temperature and lights from wall-mounted touch pads. Now, builders and interior designers say, more owners also want toilet-side technology. The homeowners […]
Plutohome Web Orbiter howto
A Web Orbiter seems good to use it on the devices which have a web browser with JavaScript support. To use it just do following: Add a new Generic Web Device from Peripherals as a Child device for your Core. The new Generic Proxy Orbiter will be created automatically on this stage. Wait when generation procedure finishes (you should see a message on some active […]
Prepare for Nokia 770 development
Recently Nokia has released an excellent device – Internet Tablet 770. It’s based on Debian Linux and it seems attractive for open source developers (see a bunch of already created applications). My interest for Nokia 770 conditions on possibility to use it as Plutohome Orbiter – graphical console to controle Smarthome system. It’s compact, has touch-screen and supports SDL – Simple DirectMedia Layer which is […]
Hexadecimal characters in GSD
Pluto allows to control A/V devices such as DVD players, amplifiers or TVs using Generic Serial Device (GSD). It supports Ruby to have possibility define commands for the devices. Generally, the device commands are plain text. For example, command ‘ON’ for DVD Denon looks like PWON and Ruby code will be like that: <$”PWON\r”$> However, some manufactures use hexadecimal characters in commands – 0xFE 0x03 […]
Install VMware tools in Plutohome
Once I’ve installed Plutohome on VMware under Windows to have a possibility test it. Generally, it’s a good idea because it seems like you have two PCs instead of one 🙂 After that I decided to install VMware tools for guest OS. It gives advanced features like set sceen resolution etc. There is a item in the main menu ‘Install VMware Tools’. I was confused […]