New to HouseBot - totally confused

[rycher10]

Hello everyone. I have been researching the idea of adding a touchscreen based home automation system to our home. I've looked at several software applications like Cinemar, XLobby, HomeSeer, mHome, and a few other no-name apps. The problem is that all the apps so far are at extremes - way to expensive ( Cinemar ) or not enough features for a worthwhile investment ( XLobby ). Cinemar is so far the most professional and polished of any app I've seen, but at the ridiculous price of watering it down and charging piece-by-piece for a complete useful system the price would be around $1000.00! Also, not too many people are willing to share their themes at their forum, which I think is a major dealbreaker. HomeSeer with it's designer HomeTouch seem very capable, but you must have ALL versions up to date for them to work together. I have a slightly older version of HSPro and the newer version of ThemeDesigner and they will not work unless I upgrade HSPro, which I won't do since it already cost me $500 for HSPro and I don't want to sink any more money into that software. I understand I need to pay for software, but I don't want to be nickle and dimed either. So my search has brought me here to CeBotics. The program is priced right, shows promise, can have themes designed, etc. but I've yet understand what it's capabilities actually are. I've seen a handful of screenshots, have not been able to find a list of out-of-the-box plugins ( or user made ), or seen any of it's capabilities actually applied.

Here is what I currently have and what I am looking for:
I have a dedicated PC running my Geovision security card with 4 hard-wired cameras. It does ONLY security, is connected to my home network via hardwired LAN, and gives me alerts via e-mail, tect, and any PC to real-time live views of all my cameras. I can also run an included program on any PC on my network for real-time camera feeds. It runs perfect.

What I want:
I will be adding a 20" touchscreen to the entrance wall of out home and connected to a PC running a home automation program. I want the GUI to be polished, and be totally customizable. I want the Home page to show a variety of windows like TOP ROW: the 4 live camera feeds, MID SECTION: calendar ( tied to Google calendar and able to publish updates, MID SECTION RIGHT: weather and upcoming events, LOWER SECTION: navigation buttons. Page 2 would be live feeds of my 4 security cameras. Page 3 would be weather feeds, Page 4 would be lighting control ( using Z-wave devices ), Page 5 would be Google traffic directions ( web based ). I want the interface to be able to control all these things - access and display Google calendar, display security camers, control my lighting ( and soon irrigation system ), access web based browser Google for directions, and have a very polished look. Can CeBot do this?

I've not seen, as I said earlier, any complete list of available plug-ins, nor any themes. Can someone please tell me if these things can be done in CeBot?

Jimmy

[Osler]

Out of the box, HouseBot does not support live video feeds on a software remote and there is no web browser control for software remotes. This doesn't mean that what you ask can't be done, but will require some effort on your part to get it all put together.

Some users have posted their software remote creations here:

http://www.cebotics.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=21

A list of compatible devices can be found here under features -> hardware compatibility list:

http://www.housebot.com/

Osler

[markd]

There are people doing camera feeds- see this thread for example. Not sure how it was accomplished.
http://www.cebotics.com/forums/viewtopi ... ra#p449924

[Richard Naninck]

The reason why a screenshot section was built is so you can get a grasp of the possibilities. HouseBot is not at all about plugins but setup very generically. This way it does very little out of the box but forms the most flexible piece of HA software around (IMO). The forum is very helpful so if you decide to go for HouseBot, you will find all the help you need here in this forum.
As for webcams or any cams for that matter; it cannot be done as part of the remote however you can create transparant holes in your theme panels that show (parts of) a webbrowser containing your cams. That's how I do it and it wordt almost as if it was native to HouseBot.
Advanced HouseBot requires some patience as well as programming skills however the latter can be found on the forum
Have fun while trying!

[Timoh]

Of course I'll get my 2 cents in for my (now extremely slow) browser client project. It will probably eventually allow you to do what you want to do, and provide for "mash-up" content on the same page. You could layout HB content directly beside web content within a theme. It's a ways off, but it is on my todo list for my browser client.

Unfortunately, "life" is getting in the way of getting my development done these days, + I've had to dive back into some new/unfamiliar C++ libraries which I'm having an "interesting" time to get to work.

But as the others have said, HB can't be beat when comes down to flexibility and doing exactly what you want to do behind the UI. I describe HB to my friends as an framework moreso than anything else. You get the the all the bits and pieces, but you still have to build it yourself. I have found that many people, myself included, have developped things that have never been officially published, but if you can usually track down who has done what from the forums, and ask nicely in order to obtain it.

Tim

[rycher10]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not at all new to theme design as I am a long tome Meedio user and still use meedio. The Meedio community is probably the best example of forum frendliness there is - they share everything, and will create plugins for you if you ask! Very very cool. But HouseBot seems different then the other automation software i've tried out. The webbrowser integration could be a dealbreaker. I understand that I could have the browser opened to my camera IP page and display it under a theme "cut out", but the browser will constantly reset to the different pages I would want to show on other pages in the setup - for instance if the Home page is to have a google, or microsoft LIVE calandar feed, then I could not have a smaller window with the camera feeds on the same page. And when opening up the SECURITY CAMERA page it would just show the calendar feeds ( or weather maps, etc) instead of the security camera page. HouseBot would need to have the capability to display live web feeds on a constant basis, without being overridden even if another page in the theme calls out for another web page. Either that or a plugin would have to be written to pull the camera feeds directly of the Geovision card in the PC.

On the theme design part, there would be such a broad selection of themes designed by the community that could also inspire more theme designs by other users - but there is not enough pics of themes in the thread. I also don't/can't design a theme from scratch ( although modifying a nice looking theme to an individual preference could easily be done). ANd the plugins - oy vey! where to start? How is one written? Can we request that one be written? I'm really leaning on HomeSeer simply because it does everything that one could ask of it without much rigging - but the cost. I have not tried HouseBot yet, nor downloaded a trail version - if one exists. Does it? What are the limitations?

So many questions......

Jimmy

[Richard Naninck]

I am also still using Meedio 1.41 and fully integrated it with HouseBot using the Meedio Messages.

When I want to display my camera's I jump to the cam panel and automatically open a HouseBot controlled webbrowser. When leaving the cam panel, the browser closes again. Fully automated but it takes a few seconds before having the cams visual.
My cam unit also has a VGA out going to an 8x8 matrix so the cam unit picture can be displayed on all tv's, touchscreens, projector etc in the house. This way I even managed to control the cam unit using my HouseBot touchscreen theme. The themepanel is there so the mouse is controlled by the touchscreen, but the screen itself displays the cam picture. HouseBot controls the cam unit using RS485 -> RS232.

[rycher10]

Interesting. I absolutely LOVE Meedio, and I have been thinking about using it for my homeautomation system but the theme that I'd want to use would have to be modified to have screens removed and others added. I don't need any of the music, dvd, tv screens. I do need the RSS feeds, weather, pictures, camera, weather. But aside from just showing info on a touchscreen mounted on my wall, it would not be able to do anything else. I want it to control my irrigation system, as well as controll my home lights thru Z-wave modules. I'm sure all this can be done within Meedio - even if using Girder to send commands - but I don't know how to modify the themes. Meedio is soooooo customizable that it would be a great program to extend over onto home automation, but the current guys who write the themes and plugins have left meedio 1.41 behind for the newer MeediOS ( which isin't even finished yet ). They don't have much interest in ressurrecting the old meedio. That's a shame really.

Jimmy

[Richard Naninck]

Lots of my old Meedio importers broke so I now use MeedioS to import imdb data and trailers. After that is done, I convert the MeedioS sqlite3 library files into Meedio sqlite2 libraries and go from there. So MeedioS actually keeps my Meedio setup alive.
I don't use Meedio to control anything. All control is done with HouseBot. I only use Meedio as a player for movies, music, tv recordings etc. Meedio imports RSS feeds, weather data, picture tag data, music tags, movies etc. All is stored in sqlite2 format and HouseBot uses those libraries to display the data but also put music or movies onto the Meedio queue.
Lots of info in just a few lines but hopefully you get it. Meedio is just used for playing and could even do without a theme gui. HouseBot does all the work. Meedio stays alive with the right codec packs (ffdshow in my case). Because of the Meedio Message stream, I can display real Meedio status in my HB theme like queue position, play time, queue etc. Using the same Messages I can control Meedio from HouseBot. Partly using the Meedio / HouseBot connector and partly by putting messages on the Meedio message queue. Works perfect. Just look at my screenshots in the screenshot section and imagine all media stuff is actually based on Meedio libraries.

[rycher10]

Richard, what are you using to have your weather updated? I've not been able to have any Meedio weather plugin successfuly download or connect. I think the plugin is broken and no one has fixed it.

Jimmy

[Richard Naninck]

weathered 1.7.3.1 by Bynary64