Home automation project

[Anna]

Hello,
I was warned off this sort of system in the past, but I feel that this
may be a good opertunity for me to get a nice development platform
with an LCD without doing too much hardware design. I can then focus
on the important stuff of customising it to my application.

On eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3080423676&category=294

This EBX7709 has an LCD with it, from the link it does not look like
it very high colour depth but I dont think that will be a problem.

My idea is to control lighting and heating around the house. I would
use Maxim I2C temp sensors places around the house connected to the
EBX. The EBX would then display the room temps and alow me to set
trigger thresholds (using the touch screen). At that point the EBX
would turn the central heating on....

Eventually I would like to control the lighting in the house with it -
I guess connect it up to pre-made dimmers replacing the usual rotary
dimming variable with the a digital pot, again connected to the EBX..

Sorry, going on a bit..- down to my question - as this comes with
windows CE. Does any one know how easy it is to write vistal
applications for this target.

If I cant get a CE project working - how easy would it be to get the
LCD and a basic graphics library working under Linux?

Has any one actually used this platform and can maybe indicate if my
plan is even feasible?

Best Regards,
Anna

 

[Dan]

Sounds like a lot of work. I know firsthand. See my website:
www.hampleman.com/energy_mgmt.htm

I am using DS1620's and I have a windows app which logs the results but I
want to do it in Java and use XML as the protocol because that's what the
building automation industry is going to. That is if you want it to work
over the web. Good luck.

Dan