Community Spotlight: Advanced Home Automation

Remember old episodes of Star Trek where Captain Kirk (or Picard, if you'd prefer) would ask for the Enterprise's computer to dim a room's lights? It was a fascinating example of what future technology would someday be capable of doing. Greg "OverloadUT" Laabs has started investigating the process, in particular, controlling lights with a computer.

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Remember old episodes of Star Trek where Captain Kirk (or Picard, if you'd prefer) would ask for the Enterprise's computer to dim a room's lights? It was a fascinating example of what future technology would someday be capable of doing. Greg "OverloadUT" Laabs, a Shacknews community member for more than five years, was among those inspired by these scenes and he soon became interested in the world of home automation -- in particular, controlling lights with a computer. Over the past few months, Laabs has taken his home automation system to new heights. Laabs has tied in his Harmony One remote control with his PC, Xbox 360, and home lighting system. His living room is now set up to remotely dim the lights whenever a movie is playing through his Xbox 360 or PS3 and automatically bring the lights back up when the movie stops. He has also hacked elements of the iPhone's SiriProxy to remote dim the lights through voice commands. Laabs has posted a demo on YouTube showing both the Harmony One and Siri controls, showing a culmination of nearly 10 years of work. By Laabs' own admission, the process was a lengthy one, involving following tech advancements and putting down serious money. Once he had all the tools, it was all a matter of figuring out the connections. "The first step was getting the light switches in to the network," explained Laabs, who is also senior community and social Media Manager at 2K Games. "I decided to go with INSTEON as the core technology and then just slowly replaced the light switches in my living room with fancy networked switches. At that point, the light switches could talk to each other, but without a central computer to tell them what to do, they really weren't anything more than regular light switches."

The INSTEON outlet

That led to the pursuit of a central computer to work as the system's brain. There were no shortage of choices, all varying in cost. Laabs was looking for something powerful with a robust API (Application Programming Interface). He eventually settled on the ISY-994i from Universal Devices, along with an IR transmitter, IR receiver for his PC, and his Harmony One remote. With all of his equipment ready, Laabs moved into implementing them. "It's one thing to have all of the parts, but another to figure out what to do with it," he said. "So far, I have found that imagining a use case (i.e. "I want to be able to dim the lights to a movie-appropriate level and have them dim up and down when I pause and unpause the movie") and working backwards from there to be pretty efficient. It required learning the unique programming interface in the ISY, but Universal Devices did a pretty decent job making it intuitive." That's not to say the process went entirely smoothly. Laabs ran into a couple of snags over the course of putting everything together. "Very early on in the process, I decided to replace one of the outlets in my house with an INSTEON outlet," he explained. "Once I had the power turned off and the wires all exposed, I realized that wiring an outlet is not the same as wiring a light switch, which I had mostly figured out myself). This resulted in a pretty humorous Chatty thread of me desperately asking for help, and getting many conflicting answers." After completing work on the Harmony One interface, Laabs focused on working with Siri. He wrote a SiriProxy plugin so that he could use his iPhone to control his lighting system. His YouTube video shows him asking Siri to play a movie, to which Siri replied that she'd dim the lights before the lights in Laabs' living room lowered to movie theater-level. As cool as the exchange looks on video, Laabs has a warning for would-be Siri hackers. "I should warn anyone interested that the process of setting up SiriProxy and making a plugin for it is fraught with peril and took way longer than I expected! SiriProxy is a very technical hack only meant for serious programmers to take on." Laabs also points to the numerous technologies used to create Siri, like VirtualBox, Linux, Git, and Ruby -- none of which Laabs had ever used prior to this project. Laabs has kept fellow Shackers up to date on his home automation progress through a number of Chatty threads. He says that his work has inspired other Shackers to take up similar projects, while others have become interested in learning more. While Laabs could conceivably call his advanced home automation system a success, he says his work is far from over. "Anyone who has played Deus Ex: Human Revolution probably remembers how cool it looked when you enter Jensen's apartment and the blinds automatically slowly raise, letting in light," Laabs said. "That's the biggest and most expensive thing I'd like to add to the system: window blinds. To do this I need to replace my blinds (which would be a nice upgrade all by itself) with ones that have a drawstring compatible with hooking up a motor. Then I could control that motor with the brain. From there, I could control the blinds with Siri, my Harmony One, and even having the blinds automatically adjust throughout the day based on the weather and temperature inside." As Laabs continues to conduct research for his home automation system, he pledges to remain focused on his other ongoing projects. One of those projects is his ongoing Dungeons & Dragons live stream on Twitch called Thursday Knights, with more than 120 episodes and counting. Laabs also offers one final tease for the future. "I just recently started working on an personal video game project inspired by one of the most underrated games of all time, but it's not really at the point where I have anything to talk about."
Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 26, 2012 9:00 AM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Community Spotlight: Advanced Home Automation.

    Remember old episodes of Star Trek where Captain Kirk (or Picard, if you'd prefer) would ask for the Enterprise's computer to dim a room's lights? It was a fascinating example of what future technology would someday be capable of doing. Greg "OverloadUT" Laabs has started investigating the process, in particular, controlling lights with a computer.

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      July 26, 2012 9:19 AM

      Pretty awesome stuff OverloadUT very nice work(cool vid too), and big ups to Shack for the article \m/

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      July 26, 2012 9:29 AM

      god damn I love this stuff.

      Though I might say that the quick mention of Thursday Knights at the end is completely burying the lede. :3

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        July 26, 2012 11:00 AM

        I actually wrote this before the big announcement, but congrats, OverloadUT, on getting a Thursday Knights panel at PAX Prime!

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      July 26, 2012 9:32 AM

      That's really awesome. I somehow missed all of his threads where he talks about doing this.

      Love the community spotlight series too.

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      July 26, 2012 9:47 AM

      Thanks to OverloadUT for working with us on the story ;)

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      July 26, 2012 10:35 AM

      [deleted]

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      July 26, 2012 10:52 AM

      Really nicely done. I think the Siri stuff is kinda overkill, but I look forward to seeing what you come up with once you start doing NFC. :)

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        July 26, 2012 11:44 AM

        Oh, the Siri stuff is purely for showing off to friends. It's not practical as grabbing the remote on the table is pretty much always faster and more reliable.

        But it's a damn good show-off feature.

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          July 26, 2012 11:52 AM

          [deleted]

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            July 26, 2012 11:58 AM

            There are lots of neat things I could do if I actually wrote software for the iPhone itself, but I haven't even considered that yet

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      July 26, 2012 11:16 AM

      This is awesome. Thanks for making the video, and thanks Shack for writing the article.

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      July 26, 2012 11:37 AM

      That's really cool that he did this himself, it always feels good when you can put something together on your own that works just the way you want. But it's not like what he's done is that amazing considering there are consumer products out there like Control 4 that lets you control everything from your TV, lights, blinds, security, A/C, home audio and even your irrigation.

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        July 26, 2012 11:47 AM

        I am using a consumer product like Control 4. I'm just using Insteon instead. Even with a consumer-friendly solution like Control 4, you have to install a lot of stuff and do the event programming yourself, unless you hire a professional to do it. That's why all of these home automation retailers have professional installation packages you can buy along with the products :)

        However, I am doing some things that are outside the scope of what any of these systems can do, like SiriProxy (actually that's probably the only bit)

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      July 26, 2012 11:51 AM

      Greg "Oat" Laabs.

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        July 26, 2012 1:05 PM

        C->Star, do you think Greg should start a home automation company called Oat Laabs??

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          July 26, 2012 1:57 PM

          That would be awesome, but leave out the extra a, so it's Oat Labs (as in Oat Laboratories).

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      July 26, 2012 11:54 AM

      [deleted]

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      July 26, 2012 12:16 PM

      GO READ THIS! The news guys are trying really hard to make the new relevant to Chatty folks. We should support that effort. Especially since it's cool stuff like this.

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      July 26, 2012 12:33 PM

      I dont think TOS era trek had much voice interaction did they?

      It was TNG that introduced the whole "Computer:" thing.

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        July 26, 2012 12:36 PM

        My first exposure to Star Trek was actually Voyager.

        (I know...I know...)

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        July 26, 2012 1:25 PM

        Haha I noticed that but didn't want to say anything. I'm surprised it took this many replies!

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      July 26, 2012 12:37 PM

      This is so cool. Ratalon has been saying he is interested in doing it as well since he heard about it from the first thread!

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      July 26, 2012 1:00 PM

      that is the worst screen grab ever of you

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      July 26, 2012 1:12 PM

      Nice write-up!

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      July 26, 2012 1:19 PM

      That's a badass setup, man. I can see how others view the Siri stuff as overkill, but it intrigues me the most. I only have an iphone 4, not a 4S, so what else can you automate Siri to do relevant to your home automation?

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        July 26, 2012 1:27 PM

        I can pretty much make the Siri part do anything. SiriProxy just executes Ruby code based on pattern matches, so anything I can make Ruby do (which is anything) I can make Siri do. The big limitation is that I can't add functionality of what shows up on the phone itself, but that's usually not what I want to do.

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          July 26, 2012 1:47 PM

          ok - now imagine your automation with that shacker who has the DRINKS MIXING setup....

          OMFG.

          tea, earl grey, hot, AND LIKE 4 SHOTS OF MAKERS MARK IN THAT BITCH

          :D

          :D

          :D

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            July 26, 2012 1:48 PM

            Wait someone has an automated drink thing set up? Who?? I WILL DO THIS.

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              July 26, 2012 1:54 PM

              I do not recall the name! it was a glorious cabinet with soda, booze, valves, actuators, and a touch LCD screen I think.

              it was FUCKING GLORIOUS. swipe to the drink you want, push button, BOOM.

              now, overloadUT that mo fo and take it to the next level??? OH YES I CAN SEE IT NOW

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      July 26, 2012 1:20 PM

      wouldn't it be hilarious if all of this was just someone off screen turning on and off all the switches :P

      awesome stuff OverloadUT... I'm guessing you're not planning on moving anytime soon eh?

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        July 26, 2012 1:28 PM

        Haha no I'm not. However, one nice thing about this tech is that it's fairly portable. I mean I have to replace all of the light switches, but if I were to move out I could install the old ones again. So far, I haven't had to install anything more permanent than switches.

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          July 26, 2012 1:45 PM

          that's cool. I would imagine if you do the blinds that would be pricey to move tho

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            July 26, 2012 1:49 PM

            Yeah, the blinds will cost me about $400 for each of my two gigantic floor to ceiling windows, then probably like $100 each for the motors.

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              July 26, 2012 2:28 PM

              ouch. how much have you spent on all of this so far?

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                July 26, 2012 3:50 PM

                Probably around $700? The brain was pricey at like $400.

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              July 26, 2012 3:34 PM

              Next step should be recessed lighting instead

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                July 26, 2012 11:14 PM

                It would be cool if he had subtle led floor lights that lead to the bathroom for those leaving during the film for a toilet break, just like the real cinema :)

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                  July 26, 2012 11:25 PM

                  I have been looking at a lot of different solutions for cheap small multicolor lights that I could control with the system. There would be a lot of applications for something like that.

                  For example, I would like my stairs to be very dimly lit at night.

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      July 26, 2012 3:55 PM

      So what underrated game are we talking about, Overload?

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      July 26, 2012 9:02 PM

      Very cool. Lots of X10 lighting controllers, eh?

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