The Homebrew Challenge gave me a reason to progress my projects, but over Christmas things have slowed down. Winning the competition has given me some money from the sale of my old car, so it seems fitting that the money is put towards finishing the current projects. This is my plan for the projects over [...]
Boron has been running Fedora since it was intitally built several years ago. It has suffered from frequent problems all the time it has been in use, and recently I gave up and have gone for something more solid and stable – Ubuntu.
After finding out that the two tuner cards I already have are too large to fit in the new Camulus case of the new MythTV master backend (aka sodium), I ordered a Nova-T 500 dual-tuner PCI card. This was a little risky because Hauppauge produced a limited run of cards for the UK that are [...]
Whilst pondering over what sensors I could put around the house, I ventured upon the idea of having a ‘sensor box’ per room. This would be based upon something like the Netiom xAP, which would connect various sensors to the house’s IP network. Some of the sensors in each room would be different. Here are [...]
Here’s a video I’ve put together about some of my projects. Sorry about the wobblyness and wonkyness – I’m not sure where I’ve put my tripod. You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
Today I took a look at the damage caused by last weekend’s test of the matrix switcher prototype. I suspect that the cause of the bangs was actually a short because in my haste to test I’d only connected one channel to a speaker and left the other with bare ends – oops! Removing the [...]
In the same way that the saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money” works, sometimes it’s also necessary to spend energy to save energy. An automated home may have more gadgetry than normal homes, but if set up correctly these little power-consumers can help to save energy. While the debate about whether the [...]
MythTV, as previously mentioned, is an open-source project that provides a client/server based media centre solution. One of the parts I like most about it is the ability to have multiple ‘recorder’ backends anywhere on the network, and all recordings are combined into one listing. You can also watch live TV through any of the [...]
As more of my sub-projects get completed, there is going to be a need to control the various systems. There are loads of IR/RF remotes around designed to handle all sorts of HA/AV equipment. However, since I’m building my systems I’m going to need a more flexible and easily customisable way of controlling them. As [...]
A little over two weeks ago I ordered a new computer from EfficientPC. They appear to be the only independent business selling true linux-based machines. Anyway, what I was after was a box that could run MythTV reliably but quietly (since it will be in the living room). At our previous house I tried to [...]