[etc-users] ETC features?

[Mark F. <mf...@mi...>]

Well.. I can't say I've made big progress in solving bugs.  I've got too
many other projects sucking my time.  You have my aplogies... I'll try to
find some time..

However I was thinking the other day about the problem at hand.  While I
orginally designed ETC to be infinitely flexible, it isn't all that easy
to use.

What do you all really want to do with ETC?  Home control? MP3 headend?
Is Linux on the server side too much to handle?

I thought of a different way to attack the problem.. its not as elegant as
the whole http PNG fetch system, but it might be more flexible and much
easier to build front ends for.

Basically the ETC terminal becomes a dumb graphics screen.  The server
connects to the Citadel and then a text based protocol can be used to
perform operations.  So there would be commands for drawing a line,
circle, bitmap and the like.  The terminal would spit back any
touches.

Now that system in itself wouldn't be terrible useful.. but it would be
fairly easy to write servers customized to one task or another.  So for
example a Winamp "control" plugin could be writen that would take the
displays IP address as a parameter, and draw a control screen.

Another server could connect to an X11 CM11a interface and do the
floorplan lights on/off functionality.

But it would be harder to have a server that did both X10 and Winamp..
(since only one server could talk to a display at a time)

It would be easier to install the server side software, since it wouldn't
involve IIS or Apache.  It could just be a dumb Windows program, with a
standard installshield installation.

Would you be willing to pay for the servers?

The terminal side would remain free.. as would the protocol to use it.

Thoughts?

Mark
mf...@mi...



-- 
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious enroachment by men of
zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis O. Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States