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May 29 New build for HomeAuto v5.1fWell its been a long time since I posted anything about the house systems.... I am changing big time.... Until now I have always run my own webservers, mail systems etc etc but time is coming when the actually running costs of these in-house systems are getting so high that there is a change in the air. I run two systems at our main house and holiday home which are linked via VPN. Over this VPN link mail, streaming TV etc etc all run. The hardware at the holiday home is end of life which means that its due for replacement. However, faced with the fact that costs are rising for the electricity I decided that it was time to ditch the Windows Media Center at the holiday home and go for a completely turn key system based on BT Vision. Now I hate BT as an ISP....however the packages they offer good value.
So all in all it will be possible to reduce the costs of running the IT at our holiday home. However, the real benefit as far as the family are concerned is the fact that there is nothing to maintain down there which frees up my time for the kids. So with that in mind v5.5 of the house systems will be rather scaled down to what it once was. I am just preparing the ground work now. So what of the 5.1.x series...it has been quite good. Its not been the best of releases and not the worst. Lately it has been causing great problems but I am sure that this will get worked out. So v5.1f...
April 11 House Firmware 5.1Well its been a while since I blogged about what I have been doing on the house...why's that I here you say. I have been working darn hard at the 5.1 release and what a release that has turned out to be. It was started as a small upgrade and turned out to be something that just grew and grew out of all control. I decided that I needed to slim down the system after what had become a massive 5.0 release. The 5.0 release was getting way too slow. When I or the family moved from room there were big delays on the lights etc etc. I also wanted to reduce the power consumption with record energy prices here in the UK things were starting to get very silly in terms of our electric bill. So this is what I decided to I was going to merge the functions of the Windows Media Centre and Home Automation server. Now this meant that I had needed to migrate the from Windows XP to Windows Vista as the target operating system. Now that was a massive undertaking! so 5.1.....well I am still trying to get to grips with it. Its been a nightmare and the nightmare is still continuing which is why I have been sooo quiet. I am on 5.1c release since the go live at Easter and I cannot see an end to it. The adventure continues.... January 30 House Firmware v5.1I am preparing the next release of the Home Automation system. There are several key systems which need to be updated to help the running of the core system. The planned cut-over will now be Easter.
That's enough for the Easter Update. The purpose of the update is to start to remove the dependency on serial based equipment as the Home Automation server is now getting very old and is in desperate need of updating. However, I can't update to the connectivity issues of some of the equipment. So this release and most of v5.1.x is aimed at reducing box count...thus reducing carbon foot print. January 12 In case you missed it: Sony Pictures is going DivX
In case you missed it: Sony Pictures is going DivX January 04 House Firmware v5.02The last version of the house firmware ended up being pretty stable so I was sort of reluctant to make any major changes. However, there were certain key changes which I needed to make around the hardware in the core. The primary change was simply the replacement of the hard drive which was starting to die on its feet. I also wanted to split the voice functions and main operations. So spawned 5.02...
Not much but I really didn't want to disturb the setup too much as its been working really well for a month or so. I still need to address media playing and wi-fi access in the house so I guess there's going to be a 5.02a but I really wanted to get the big jobs sorted during the Christmas period. |
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