[misterhouse-announce] Version 2.71 posted on 09/21/2002

[Bruce W. <br...@mi...>]

Version 2.71 was just uploaded to:

  http://misterhouse.sf.net/download.html
  http://misterhouse.net:81/download.html


New Features:

- Richard Morgan's sent in mh/code/public/cbus_v2.0.zip, his set of code for
talking to CBUS devices via the Australian Clipsal CGATE interface.

- Ron Klinkien and Paul Wilkinson enabled the great sounding AT&T
NaturalVoices TTS engine on Linux. ($150 from http://www.naturalvoices.com )
Use the voice_text_naturalvoice parm to point to where you have it installed
and set voice_text=naturalvoice. As with the Windows version, you can use
the speak voice=name option to pick a non-default voice.

- Jason Sharpe and I added several new methods: Generic_Item get_idle_time
and Group member_changed and member_changed_log. This allows us to use Group
items to monitor sets of sensors for detecting occupancy states. This change
means that Group states will change whenever a member's state changes, but
these can be distinguised from full group state changes (member only state
changes are prefixed with 'member'). See an example of these new methods in
Jason's occupancy algorithm in mh/code/public/monitor_occupancy_jason.pl.

- Added the option to use additional mh instances as proxies to allow for
remote ports (e.g. 'mh in the barn'), distributed lan-based speech, or
buffering of slow serial data to avoid the 'mh pause' problem. See 'Use
distributed MisterHouse proxies' in mh/docs/mh.* (
http://misterhouse.net/mh.html#use%20distributed%20misterhouse%20proxies )

- Created mh/code/public/speak_proxy.pl as an example of how to allow for
speech to distributed mh proxies using the speak rooms= parm.

- Added speak voice=next and voice=all options. For each speak call,
voice=next will cycle through to the next available voice, as listed in the
mh.ini voice_names parm. voice=all is a goofy option, inspired by the fun
songs at dictionaraoke.org, that will select a different voice for each word
in a phrase. This only works with XML enabled TTS engines (MSV5 and linux
naturalvoices), but just as well as it is not very intelligible :) For those
with other engines, you can use mh/code/public/speak_voices.pl to do the
same thing by synthesizing each word to seperate wav files, then use
Audio::Wav to concatonate them into one wav file.

- Added mh.ini parm sleep_count, so we can control how often mh sleeps per
pass. Default is now 5 (was 2) and I lowered the default sleep_time parm
from 50 to 10 (milliseconds). By sleeping more often for less time, total
%cpu use is decreased, since active code does not don't swap out of cache as
often.



Bug Fixes and Other Changes:

- Tom Christian sent in an update that allows for spaces in mh.ini web alias
parms.

- Steve Switzer noticed that get_set_by always returned 'serial' for
Serial_Item. Also changed this to return an object name, rather than object,
if set by a tied item.

- Scott Johnston noticed a 2.70 problem with Festival server not being used.
Also uniquified files when calling the one-the-fly festival.

- Steve Switzer found a 2.67 bug where get_email_rule.pl would filter out
most email announcements.

- Dean Junk sent in mh/code/public/process_weather1.pl, his code for using
weather forecasts to control his sprinkler systsm.

- Craig Schaeffer sent in mh/code/public/hvac_craig.pl as an example of a
function he uses in his HVAC setup to do a smart heat/cool setback cycle.

- Brian Rudy sent in mh/code/public/monitor_occupancy_brian.pl as an example
of how he monitors multiple motion sensors to determine activity in the
house.

- Clive Freedman created web/bin/code_search.pl to improve the web ia5
search menu 'code search' output.

- Steve Flick sent in mh/code/public/x10_power_reset.pl as an example of how
to reset the X10 items in a group after a power reset.

- David Norwood updated bin/get_tv_grid to correctly delete old data for
shows starting after 11:30pm. If you have a big data_dir/tv_programs.dbm
file, you may want to delete it then run 'redo tv grid data for the next 2
weeks' to clean up the old dbm file and speed up tv searches. My search time
went from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. We also changed the default -purge
option from 14 days to 2 days. David fixed a problem with bin/get_tv_info
with shows that ended at midnight and changed the default -increment option
from 5 to 30 minutes, so searches are faster.

- Brent DeShazer notice a 2.68 problem where viavoice would always speak
'Mike' when using the default voice_names parm.

- Max Lock enabled channel A/B selection for iButtom DS2406 switches. For
example: $ib_relay1 = new iButton $id, undef, 'B'; set $relay1 ON;

- Fixed a 2.70 problem (perl 5.0 windows users only) which misplaced 2 Win32
modules.

- Updated map graphics links generated in code/bruce/tracking_aprs.pl.
Mapblast changed its urls, so I switched to call vicinity.com directly via a
new script at mh/web/bin/display_map.pl


Bruce