Re: [etc-users] ETC features?

[Chris K. <ch...@ck...>]

Hello,

> 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.

I'll take your word on the ease-of-use. I have not yet started architecting the touchscreen PHP code, as the Citadel isn't really working yet. 

Actually, after the refresh problem was resolved, I was going to ask if I could please have a copy of your ETC apartment layout sources so I could get some ideas from it. Would this be possible? I know you said your existing code wasn't ready to be released, and you were thinking about modularizing/objectizing the code, but I personally don't want to burden you with rewriting your PHP code if you didn't already want to do so. And it would be really helpful to see a snapshot of working ETC code. 
 
> What do you all really want to do with ETC?  Home control? MP3 headend?

Most certainly home control. I have a fairly disconnected set of home automation devices at the moment, including a CM11A and a pair of JDS TimeCommanders with A/D interfaces, and would also like to do speech synthesis.

I envision being able to throw as many as a dozen "imagemaps" at the Citadels, with, basically, links from one to the other. The first floor ETC would have the first floor imagemap displayed by default, and by touching one set of stairs or another, the second floor or basement imagemaps could be displayed. Or by touching the entertainment center on the first floor imagemap, various A/V functions could be performed, including MP3 playback.

> Is Linux on the server side too much to handle?

Not sure yet. I hope not, though.
 
> 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.
[...]
> Another server could connect to an X11 CM11a interface and do the
> floorplan lights on/off functionality.

This is an interesting idea. I don't really know which would be more appropriate, though. I could see it being easier this way, as it sounds more modularized. 
 
> 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)

As long as there is a mechanism for switching between X10 and Winamp, in this example, then does it matter? 
The touchscreen isn't very large to begin with, and serving a simple page over 10Base-T should be pretty quick. I'm planning on only having one "service" on the screen at a time anyway. X10 or Winamp or weather reports or... More than one service at a time might be confusing anyway. 

> 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.

I already have a Linux box on 24/7 doing the firewall/NAT stuff, so I'm not inclined to have a Windoze box up 24/7 too. But that's just me. 

However, as someone else already described, maybe something which could generate the HTML imagemaps would be nice. I havn't used FrontPage before, but if it's an all-in-one package for creating imagemaps and interacting with and switching between imagemaps, then that sounds good to me. 
 
> Would you be willing to pay for the servers?

My time has some value associated with it, so anything to make the entire system come together quicker and more reliably would be worth something. I'd probably put a cap at $100, though. (I think if we had gobs of cash, we probably wouldn't have gone the cheap Citadel route. ;-) )
 

Thanks,
Chris

--
Chris Kalisiak
CK Computer Systems
http://www.ckcomputersystems.com
Specializing in DEC hardware since 1993