Submission by Paul Gale - Following a post by one of the members of the UKHA_D mailing list, I recently bought a home brew product that enables control of a Sky or Sky+ box from a PC (Windows or Linux) and ultimately, the Internet. I've been looking for something to do this for years so thought I'd share my findings with my fellow HAers...

Submission by David Pullen

Some of you will know that I am a big fan of the VIOM from Phaedrus. I use 4 VIOMs to control my heating, some windows and blinds, led lights, electromagnetic locks and also to take inputs from motion detectors and a variety of other devices. Some of the VIOMs are connected directly via the serial port and some over ethernet via MSS100s from Lantronix. It is rather helpful being able to connect the VIOMs over the network and so I was pleased to hear that Phaedrus was producing the Netiom. When I contacted Roy Schofield (at Phaedrus) I was even more interested to hear that he was planning to work on a xAP-enabled Netiom...

I'm back from a hectic weekend at the Smarthome Show. I've just uploaded the photographs I took and a little review of the show. "The first ever Smart Home show ran from 14th to the 17th April 2005 in Hall 9 of Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre - the NEC...

The O'Reilly series of "Hacks" books, in their own words 'reclaims the term 'hacking" for the good guys--innovators who explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on their own.', sounds like a pretty good description of a UK Home Automater to me, so I was a little excited to see O'Reilly had published 2 books in the series for home automators..

Submission by Tim Fletcher - The Maplin telephone controlled mains socket adapter is a device using a telephone landline to switch a 13A socket. What's in the Box  - Switcher Unit, 3M telephone extension cable, Instructions...

 

Yesterday I received my Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Remote. This device allows you to control your MCE PC in a more convenient way, and one more akin to normal domestic brown goods. At around £30 it's relatively inexpensive, which is just as well as it's not worth building a Media Center PC without one...

FirM Jr + KAT5 - A marriage made in Croydon :) (Submission by Tony Butler).

Having made the decision many moons ago to move all my AV kit to node 0 (coincidentally, around the time my twin boys were born!), I have long sought the twin holy grails of quality distributed A/V and reliable distributed IR control...

Jon Whiten recounts his recent project building a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PC...

"I recently built a MCE2005 machine and have been using it for a few weeks now. The system is basically a P4-3.2Ghz, 1Gig Ram, 80Gig HDD, ATI 9200 Graphics with DVI and Svid Out, 2 x BlackGold DVB-T TV Cards, Dual Layer DVD Writer, Soundblaster Audigy and MCE Remote control...