Hello all,

I'm now in my Final Year at Bournemouth University and am currently doing my final year project. People have seen me buying random bits and bobs on here and asking some silly questions in regards to Linux. I have now started my blog which has been designed to keep rough notes on so I don't forget in doing my write up. Please do take a look below and let me know what you think:

http://robertdshaw.blogspot.com/

It's really basic at the moment as the project has just started. Most of the time has been spent on the research which hasn't been uploaded onto the blog yet. .

I look forward to your progress

Interesting. Some of us are old enough to remember "Tomorrows World" on the BBC.

Looks a very interesting project i also do computing at bournemouth uni but am currently away on placement an return in september for my final year. Good luck an i will keep checking on your progress

Will keep an eye on this Rob

Best of luck.

Rob, that's brilliant mate. I think you've gained a few fans here! I'll keep watching.

I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to update this further. I'm planning to update the blog with more 'indepth' information but I'm currently having a nightmare here waiting for some equipment to arrive for the hardware side.

The first update is I managed to get myself some Tenvis WI-FI IP Cameras. These come with the following included - Pan/tilt function/ Day and Night vision/ HQ video/ Alarms/ Snapshot pictures/ Recording both video + Audio/ Mobile compatible. Including some brief pictures below - Interesting how in 'night mode' the lights to the human eye are red however below on a camera they are white:

Picture quality isn't bad and 'Motion Sensors' picking up the following in pictures and video:

(This also shows the Admin interface panel - so it's easy to setup and configure the cameras).

(This is my housemate finding one) - Video... Click me.

I'm going to be honest, I heard that Tenvis was a rip-off of another brand. I'm trying to limit the £££'s spent on this project so this is why I initally went with Tenvis products. I didn't have many issues with these apart from the initial install download that Tenvis provided. I ended up having to find a different install package and wing it from there after spending over an hour on Skype to Tenvis customer support!

The main point to note is to install these as 'wired' devices using an Ethernet cable direct to the router. Then once done - configure it via the admin panel as a wireless setup and remove the Ethernet Cable. I also did a rookie mistake in clicking 'Obtain IP Address from DHCP Server' this rendering the camera useless untill I re-installed the software.

I also got some more hardware to scatter across the house on various different devices. Nothing outstanding to mention here - Just plug and play once I have done the coding side of things. I'm still waiting on alot more to arrive and plan to create a map/floor plan to demonstrate where all the devices are located across the house.

I had fantastic issues with Bottle Rocket/Rocket Launcher on my test VM. Apparently as I installed the version with the interface the old faithful server has major issues! I would send the command to turn on a light and 10mins later, it would eventually turn on. So, I'm currently installing a text version called HEYU which also works with X10 devices. In talking with my project supervisor my project had too much scope and I was advised to use an Open Source mobile phone application instead of coding my own. I have also been testing a few this week with 'domus' being my number 1 for Android platform which is basically just a 'Front End' for HEYU. More information can be found here: http://domus.link.co.pt/

I also failed to mention that I will be using some Perl. I have been looking here: http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ and then good old 'How hard could it be' was said. I plan to link this with my head and arduino chip set for more functionality. (Once it arrives)

That's all the interesting information out the way. Apparently, I have to do a write up also - Pah. . I'm technically 'dyslexic'. I have never let this be an issue or an excuse and will never let this get in my way. The first step to make the write up easier was to split this into sections. I created a 'mind map' from the marking scheme and then applied it to my project making relevant sections:

1. Abstract

2. Project Introduction - Complete

2.1. Project Overview - Complete

2.2. Aims and Objectives - Complete

2.3. Project Scope /Methodology

3. Home Automation System and Technology Research

3.1. Avatar and Graphical User Interfaces Technology Research

3.1.1. Android Mobile Phone Application Research

3.1.2. Conclusions

3.2. Speech Recognition

3.2.1. Speech Recognition Process

3.2.2. Speech Recognition Conclusions

3.3. Speech Synthesis

3.3.1. Speech Synthesiser Conclusions

4. Requirements Elicitation

5. Requirements Specification - Complete

5.1. Functional Requirements - Complete

5.2. Non-Functional Requirements - Complete

5.3. Assumptions

6. Design

6.1. Conversation Controller - Decision Tree

6.1.1. Nodes - Complete

6.1.2. Node Traversal

6.1.3. Decision Tree Traversal

6.1.4. Initiating Conversation from Sleep State

6.2. System UML Activity Diagram

6.3. Speech Recogniser and Speech Synthesiser

6.3.1. Speech Recogniser

6.3.2. Speech Synthesiser

6.3.3. Graphical User Interfaces

6.4. Configuration Manager GUI

6.5. Potential Implementation Issues Analysis

7. Implementation

7.1. Software and Hardware Specification

7.2. Development Methodology

7.3. Avatar

7.3.1. Graphical User Interface and Implementation

7.4. Speech Recogniser

7.4.1. Speech Recognition Implementation Process Overview

7.4.2. XML Configuration and Implementation Detail

7.5. Node and Responses

7.6. Configuration Manager

7.7. Component Integration - Conversation Controller

7.7.1 Additional Integration - Technical Difficulties

8. Testing and Results

8.1. Test Strategy

8.2. Dynamic Black and White Box Testing

8.2.1. Avatar Unit Testing

8.2.2. Speech Recogniser Unit Testing

8.2.3. Mobile Phone Application Testing

8.2.4. Integration Testing

8.2.5. Static Testing

9. Summary, Conclusion and Critique

9.1. Initial Aims and Objectives Assessment

9.1.1 Assessment Conclusion

9.2. Future System Improvements/Enhancements

9.3. Project Management and Development Method Critique (Critical Evaluation)

10. References and Bibliography

11. Appendix

11.1. System Prototype

11.2. User Manual

11.3. Testing

11.4. Dynamic Black Box and White Box Testing

11.5. System Code

I'm probably not going to post every section up (unless you want me to) just so that I don't send everyone on Briskoda to sleep. Today I have been thinking about Nodes and managed to draft up this quick diagram to demonstrate the interaction between the head/user and home network. I plan to redo this using Visio to make it look pretty but it gives you an idea of the thought process as seen simplified below:

Input > Processing > Output

Question/Command > NLP (National Language Processing) > Answer/Action.

Open to thoughts, questions and suggestions - Good or Bad as always.

Looks good

Ive been looking at getting some IP cameras for home security - are those decent with the IR (and is the IR visible to naked eye) - judging by the pics they are ok but would you recommend for pointing outdoors

Ive been looking at getting some IP cameras for home security - are those decent with the IR (and is the IR visible to naked eye) - judging by the pics they are ok but would you recommend for pointing outdoors

In testing this for you - The IR is indeed visible to the naked eye. When I also tried to view through glass (at night) the whole picture is distorted during the day time it's fine. If you did want this for outdoor use, I would suggest looking bigger at an outdoor wall mounted one.

In testing this for you - The IR is indeed visible to the naked eye. When I also tried to view through glass (at night) the whole picture is distorted during the day time it's fine. If you did want this for outdoor use, I would suggest looking bigger at an outdoor wall mounted one.

Cheers. Would be for pointing out of an upstairs window down at the car. Currently have a cheaper webcam doing this but requires a PC to be left on all day, lacks IR for night, and would really like to have PTZ indoors.

Will keep looking

Managed to get a tiny update done today - http://robertdshaw.blogspot.com/

Some fantastic updates heading next! Formatting is messing up at the moment but will sort that at some point.

The Arduino finally arrived today - Thus allowing me to have a little install and a play before implementing it.

A few random designs of me trying to work out how to fit the chipset within the head -

My design skills aren't the best so lets move on and focus on the hardware/software side for now - Boom:

Setup the basic functionality now with the 'network' as such looking like this. It's just a question of attaching an X10 device to the appliances and then configuring them within the X10.conf and X10.sched files:

It has taken a while but today I finally managed to get:

(I'm sorry for the poor music choice - Please do note the 'Dim' functionality, whilst I'm using a rubbish energy saving bulb this has been implemented on all light modules as standard.)

Whilst the above doesn't look impressive at all - I can confirm it is indeed running from a CM12U device as a command, can be scheduled with little/no effort at all, works via the local host website so it now has a fancy interface and also is working as a mobile app. The web interface allows for new 'modules' to be added with ease and then saved, this takes the time away from having to open to x10.conf file constantly.

The only issue that this has all thrown up so far was I kept getting a permission error with the lampp server picking up the CM12U device on ttyusb0 and then dropping it a second later. The permissions were the root cause (pardon the linux pun) here with crw-rw---- set for the user 'nobody'. This was figured out after a simple dmesg | grep tty.

I'm also getting simple <php> errors on site itself - I'm currently modifying the /opt/lampp/etc/php.ini file to 'hide' these as they aren't impacting the project as such. Honest.

The 'head' now has a name 'Auto' taken from 'Home Automation' bland I know but I needed to push on. It's also currently in bits having some fancy upgrades including mounted arduino chipset, LED Diodes within the eyes, Speaker mounted on the arduino audio port, hollowed out base to fit the server in, hole for cooling/cables and a polish of all things! I simply attacked this with a air powered hacksaw, smoothed the edges and mounted custom clips to attach the rear back on. (Pictures to come....)

Where next? I have a slight problem in that linking 'Auto' to the server and X10 devices that this has to be done in Python. I'm a complete novice in Python of all things (yay) so currently learning and constructing whilst asking others for help along the way. In short, the user will say a command, the command is then recognised by either a case statement or an arraylist which then sends a trigger from the arduino chipset to the server and then on to the X10 devices.

More updates to follow soon.