Apress - Smart Home Automation with Linux (2010)- P3 ppt

■ CONTENTS
ix

Voice 157
The Software for Voice Recognition 158
Remote Voice Control 160
Speech Synthesis 161
Piecemeal Samples 164
Web Access 165
Building a Web Server 166
SMS 174
Processing with a Phone 175
Custom Numbers and APIs 178
Conclusion 184
■Chapter 6: Data Sources 185
Why Data Is Important 185
Legalities 185
Distribution 190
Public Data 190
TV Guides 190
Train Times 191
Road Traffic 193
Weather 193
Radio 197
CD Data 199
News 201




■ CONTENTS

x

Private Data 204
Calendar 204
Webmail 206
Twitter 208
Facebook 210
Automation 210
Timed Events 211
Error Handling 213
Conclusion 214
■Chapter 7: Control Hubs 215
Integration of Technologies 215
The Teakettle: An Example 216
Minerva 218
Overview 219
Linux Users Are Not HA Users 220
Device Abstractions 222
Conduits 226
Messaging Conduits 229
Message Relays 234
Time-Based Messaging 234
Location-Based Messaging 236
Cosmic 237
Web Applets 239
Manifest 256
Marple 257
Utility Scripts 261

■ CONTENTS

xi

Topology Ideas 262
Networking 262
Wiring Looms 264
Conclusion 267

Index 269

xii

About the Author
■Steven Goodwin (London, England) has been involved in science
and technology from an early age, building his first synthesizer while
still in his teens. Since then, his projects have been wide and varied. He
has built robots, musical instruments, and chess sets, and he has a
house that can be controlled from the Internet where he is able to e-
mail his video and control his light switches from work.
The growth of this desire for home automation led to the creation
of the Minerva project, an open source suite of tools and protocols that
make it possible to combine many different technologies and have
them interact in new and interesting ways. It is a project for which he is
still the lead architecture and developer.
He is also an active member of the Linux, free software, and open source communities and has
spoken at many conferences, including UKUUG, FOSDEM, NotCon, and the BBC Backstage OpenTech
event. His articles have appeared in more than 50 magazines, covering topics from programming to
management (even including magic and beer!), and he is the author of two industry-standard textbooks
for the game industry.
Currently, Steven is funding his passion for technology through the development of the SGX 3D
engine and his work on games for Facebook.

xiii

About the Technical Reviewers
■Steve Potts graduated from Manchester University, England, with a bachelor’s degree in applied
computing and continued to study a master’s degree in computing for commerce and industry at the
Open University, United Kingdom.
His career has a foundation in the defense industry, squeezing an immense amount of failure-
resistant software into a remarkably small footprint, which migrated into developing for handheld
devices, the mobile Internet, and the e-commerce Web.
Given his meticulous disposition (his friends have other words to describe this), he is an
accomplished technical editor having worked on Java, XHTML, PHP, wireless, and social media
publications including Building Online Communities from Apress.
Steve is the founder of the technical consultancy outfit Free Balloon, and he has the rewarding
position of CTO at Hawdale Associates, an invigorating usability and design customer experience
company operating out of Manchester, England.
He is continuously refitting his house with home automation technology.

■Michael Still is the author of The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick and Practical MythTV. He hacks on
a variety of open source projects and likes playing with embedded systems. He also spends too much
time reading science-fiction novels. He lives in Australia with his wife and two kids.