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[vincentb]

Hi people,

My company has spent 5 years developing a Home Automation Enhancer software app - called MyServant - that currently works with HAL2000 to significantly expand its home automation features.  But we're considering enhancing MyServant to also work with ActiveHome... but first i'd like some feedback if it's worth our while, and if people would be keen.

MyServant is a suite of executables, including Server & Touch-Screen Interface components.  The Server component runs seamlessly in the background and adds a plethora of extra features to a Home Automation software app... the Interface component provides a touch-screen compatible interface, with some unique features.



Visual Interface features include:
- Touch screen support
- Extensive Visual Control of your home via a custom floor-plan
- See which occupants are home & away
- See & hear who's calling the home before you answer it
- Access your own personal websites & voicemail on-screen
- Control of your Security System, HVAC, media equipment & more
- Weather forecast displays
- Tracking & low-notification of Battery-levels for all home appliances
- Visual display of your Address book
- and so much more

Server-end Home Automation features include:

Lighting Intelligence
Add all sorts of logical decisions to your lighting, simply by ticking options. Let your lights determine what brightness to come on depending on the time; determine how to avoid false triggers of motion sensors; how long to keep lights on after you leave the room; how to ignore motion sensors when lights are manually controlled; and much more.

Personality Integration[/b]
Give your home a personality!  The interface component will popup a butler/maid, whenever the Home Automation System is listening to your commands or making an announcement.    What’s more, The personality is provided by MyServant’s random-comment feature, where it varies its response to questions, depending on what you say in return and whether you repeat yourself.

Room Targeted Announcements[/b]
Just like Star Trek – where the computer only responds to a person where they’re located, MyServant allows speakers to be defined in your home, for particular announcements.  Have your home welcome/farewall you only at the front door, play the voicemail in the kitchen, or call out to wake you up in your bedroom.

Advanced Alarm Clocks[/b]
Throw away that inferior alarm clock.  Have your PC wake each person in the home up in the morning; with random phrases, daily individual schedules, override schedules, enhanced snooze ability, and room-targeted wakeup calls, run specific macros (eg: open curtains when it’s time to wakeup), and more.

Occupant Tracking[/b]
Let your PC track who’s home and who’s not!  MyServant will set the appropriate house-mode and run macros (eg: arm the alarm, turn off lights), based on when the last person leaves or 1st person arrives.

Status enquiries[/b]
Ask your home what was the last thing it said (and you can configure it to "forget" after a period of time!) – eg: ask it who’s home, or why a light isn't turning on.



And much much more.  Currently, to use MyServant, you also need HAL2000 installed... but since ActiveHome is a much more popular Home Automation Software app, we're thinking of enhancing MyServant to support it also. 

Your opinion is appreciated.  Check out the full feature list of MyServant on our website, and let us know if you think it's worth us expanding it to support ActiveHome also.

More details on MyServant can be found at:  http://www.futuretouch.com.au/index-3.asp

Thanks.

[Knightrider]

Holy Cow, Batman.  What kind of question is that?  should it support AHP?  YES.  The possibilities are coursing through my head as I type!  Very Cool. 
BTW, if you could work in support for an extra (raw) USB board and interface it with the CM15A (still maintaining the x10 drivers) that would really be great.

I've been looking for a way to monitor several different heat sensors (maybe pressure as well) and make these work with x10 and AHP.  Yes, I know about homedomination (different drivers) and Homeseer, but AHP is my current flavor and I'm reluctant to change.  A display on the computer for the sensors would be nice as well.

[s0urc3f0ur]

The posiblilitees seem endless..Myservant would be a great add on for AHP and the CM15a!  Not only that ..but I  my guess woud be that there are way more users of AHP then HAL simply because of the cost effectivness that AHP allows. I look forward to using Myservant with AHP hopefully in the near future. And I for one would gladly volunteer to beta test as I am sure others here at  the forum would too! Keep us posted!

[Dan Lawrence]

The only problem I can see is that X10 may not want to have AHP reverse engineered to make it work with MyServant Software.  Active Home Pro is proprietary.

[steven r]

...I for one would gladly volunteer to beta test as I am sure others here at  the forum would too!...

Count me in!
Murphy helps me out a lot when I'm beta testing.
e.g. I tend to find problems that only happen to others if they use the software while standing on their head. 

[BSRMAN]

Dan is absolutely correct in this. We have been waiting for docs on the CM15a since it was introducted.

[vincentb]

Thanks guys,

I see there is some interest then.  I'm the main software engineer for MyServant actually, and it's taken 4-5 years to develop it to where it's at now. 

Dan,  there's no need for me to reverse-engineer anything, from what I can see.  ActiveHome Pro provides a Softrware Development kit for programmers, that exposes all of the necessary methods and events via an interface.  Automated Living did this also, which was why we were able to develop MyServant.  Apart from the plethora of features, we spent 1 year solely on the architecture - and one of the key factors was to develop a generic interface to the underlying system, so that we could change the interface to support different Home Automation apps if need be.

All I need to do is learn the ActiveHome SDK, develop an interface to utilise its methods and events, and the rest is clockwork.

Understand that you wont have to re-enter any sensors or devices into MyServant.  It retrieves all of this information from the parent Home Automation app, but allows many more settings to be applied.  Eg: an upcoming feature will have the ability to tick a checkbox for sensors that use batteries, and MyServant will monitor how often each sensor triggers... when a sensor hasn't triggered for a while, MyServant will check if it uses batteries - whereby an on-screen warning will indicate that batteries in that sensor may be flat, or a faulty-sensor warning if it doesn't use batteries.   That's one small upcoming feature of many many more than are in the pipeline.

We've tried to develop this software so as not to re-invent the wheel (in that it interfaces to existing home automation apps) but provides an intuitive interface that other apps may not have.  eg: We're looking at also building in a recipe system (incase the touch screen is in the kitchen), where recipies can be entered, a recipe's steps progress (or even read out to you), and each week someone can select the recipies to be cooked.  Then if you happen to be shopping, you can ring the home and ask MyServant for the shopping list, and it will SMS the shopping list to you. 

There's so many more features to come that i can't begin to describe them all.  And the number of features it already has is much more than mentioned in the posting above.  Only thing is, it takes us many many months to develop the software (we spent over a years just on external beta testing for v3.0 to confirm its stability), but we don't want to take this step unless we think we'd get enough sales to compensate for the work, seeing as we only sell MyServant for $50, to make it attractive.

Anyway, from the feedback so far, I'll start looking into the Active Home Pro SDK.   BTW: people have been asking about support for the CM15.  Remember, MyServant leaves all the hardware supporting to the parent home automaiton app (like AHP).  So that shouldn't be a problem.

[Dan Lawrence]

I can't see any advantage to  MyServant Software with AHP as it would be another software layer over AHP which is the only way to communicate with the CM15A.  Plus, your link is to a Australian site, which is not the United States or Canada, where AHP is the only Windows app for controlling X10.  If  MyServant Software would talk directly to the CM15A, fine.  X10USA will only sell the CM15A with AHP, you cannot buy it alone.

[vincentb]

As previously indicated, enhancing MyServant to be AHP-compatible would be primarily to expand AHP's features.  eg: You wouldn't need to configure complex rules & macros in AHP naymore, to have lights trigger with motion sensors and certain times of days, for certain periods of time, and at certain brightnesses - it's just a matter of tickng options in MyServant Server.  What's more, if the MyServant Interface component were also used, people would be able to control their homes via a floorplan where the actual shape of each room can be defined, and the current status of lights/devices is displayed (not just on/off, but also if its on a timer, if its about to turn off, if it turned on from a false trigger, etc).  All the features that were mentioned in the original posting are just some benefits that can be added to AHP via MyServant.

Yes - MyServant is downloaded via an Australian site - and your point is?  I'm sure you're aware AHP sells world wide?  The majority of our existing customers for MyServant are actually in the US.  So I'm a little confused as to how the location of a program to be downloaded has any significance?  Whether someone buys a 110v CM15 or a 240v CM15, the communication protocol to AHP is the same - and MyServant would only communicate with AHP to utilise the CM15.

BTW: AHP is not the only app for controlling X10; there's a plethora, such as HAL2000, Homeseer, etc.  But if we made MyServant controlled X10 devices directly, then it wouldn't compliment any of these existing world leading apps; it would just be trying to compete.  Thus by leaving the hardware interfacing to existing apps (liek AHP) and instead providing a whole range of addon features, there's no decision as to which app controls the X10 devices.  If MyServant wants to turn a light on (in order to satisfy one of its own rules), it simply tells the parent program to do so.  And what's more, its rule-making is quite fast.  With HAL2000, for example, MyServant processes its rules up to 200% faster.  Whether any speed improvements could be gained with AHP would depend on how they've tied their SDK into their program.

If anyone is interested - just as those who have alreayd expressed interest, take a look at http://localhost/www.futuretouch.com.au/MSFeatures.asp for a larger list of some features that we could possibly add on to AHP, via MyServant.

[Dan Lawrence]

X10 USA does not sell Active Home Professional world wide, only in the United States and Canada.  Other X10 interfaces are not made by X10USA but by other X10 licenses not connected to X10USA.  The CM15A is a USB device, other X10 interfaces are all serial devices.

[s0urc3f0ur]

X10 USA does not sell Active Home Professional world wide, only in the United States and Canada. Other X10 interfaces are not made by X10USA but by other X10 licenses not connected to X10USA. The CM15A is a USB device, other X10 interfaces are all serial devices.

Why does any of this make a difference? It seems that the Myservant software would only serve to compliment AHP while adding features that do not exist in AHP. We all know how often X10 provides  updates  for their program , so why wouldn'nt an add on software be of benefit to the people who use it. Many other users  have created GREAT add on programs for AHP (Bill, Tuicimen,etc.) and I have not read one negative thing about those programs. It seems Dan that sometimes you just like to be a Negative Nelly!

[Dan Lawrence]

I'm not a Negative Nelly.

The  MyServant Software is not USA made, it's Australian.  I've read all about it and all the X10 interfaces it works with seem to be 100% serial.  AHP is a USA/Canada product only.  The power frequency in Australia is 50HZ, 240 Volts.  The CM15a is strictly 110Volts, 60hz.
 

[vincentb]

OK - thanks for all your feedback guys, including the plethora of personal messages I've received.. I guess that it will be worth enhancing it.  It's now a matter of us learning the AHP SDK.  When it's time for us to get some beta testers (as although we already use and sell AHP, I'm probably not as proficient with each & every feature as many of you), I'll come track down some beta testers, but that will be a few months away.

This will probably be my last posting for a while - well on this thread anyhow.  Thanks for the feedback.  Thanks for your feedback too Dan, though unfortunately I cannot seem to properly make you understand - MyServant does not communicate to ANYTHING hardware based - all of its commands and events are through the parent program (such as AHP, HAL, Homeseer, whatever).  MyServant is NOT serial based, its NOT restricted to 50Hz and NOT restricted to 240v.  I'm not sure how else to explain that AHP would take care of all the hardware interaction (whether its communicating to an US-based CM15, or a european based CM15, or whatever). MyServant would only interface to AHP.  Thus, since it's only software-interaction, it doesn't matter what country/region a software is developed in.  And hence why our largest customers for MyServant is in the US, as I've already stated.

Anyway, thanks people.. I'll be viewing the posts now and then... and if people have feature requests that they see is not currently on MyServant that they'd like to see working with AHP, by all means let us know.  Some examples of other possible upcoming features include:
- timers, where the PC will tell you how long you have left until you need to do something (eg: leave the house for an appointment, get the food out of the oven, etc)
- have the PC remind you in the morning (eg: when you walk into the ensuite) of upcoming birthdays, appointments, etc
- warn you before you leave the house if you need to grab an umbrella
- display screen scrapes of websites, for snippets of info people are interested to have glances at, on the screen
- and much more.

[Tuicemen]

Dan The Software isn't what sends out the information over the power lines the Hard ware does that! the AHP SDK works for both the CM15A and the Cm15-EU you can also use the EU version of AHP to control your CM15A!
I have used (tested) many thirdparty software programs from overseas that work fine with my CM15A!

vincentb Nice looking App although you will find that the AHP SDK is not a true Software Development Kit! Some of the things you see your app doing isn't possible with it yet!

[Dan Lawrence]

Ok, I yield to both vincentb and Tuicemen.

 MyServant Software looks interesting, but it's not something I need or want.  I'll drop out of this topic after this post.