
Show HN: Home automation and lighting control with Kinect - nitrogen
http://nitrogen.posterous.com/home-automation-and-lighting-control-with-kin
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sliverstorm
_For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning
dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made
touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now
all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the
components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but
meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening
to the same programme._ \-- Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy

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nitrogen
Impressive foresight from Douglas Adams there, though I suppose with the
Theremin as precedent it's believable.

I confess that I did have exactly this problem in the early stages of
development :).

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noonespecial
Looks like his "automation controller" is a sheevaplug miniature "plug
computer".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug>

I'd love to know more about all of the steps involved with hooking that up to
a Kinect and getting it to process input and perform tasks.

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nitrogen
It involves a lot of custom software that I will be describing in more detail
in the future. Naturally there's also some open source code, like libfreenect
and Linux+GNU.

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noonespecial
You know what'd be awesome? (Just throwing it out here). If the lights
smoothly ramp up and down instead of winking on and off. It'd be way more Star
Trek and much more impressive looking to the uninitiated. (Although, if you're
already using X10 or similar modules to control the lights, ridiculously easy
to actually add.)

~~~
nitrogen
They do fade smoothly, actually, but the limited dynamic range of the camera
hides this.

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prawn
Just quickly, do others also pronounce "posterous" as nitrogen does in the
video? (post to rhyme with "frost" rather than "post")

I might have it all wrong! Assumed it was because you were "posting"
something, not a play on "preposterous."

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nitrogen
In the Mixergy interview I saw (I think it's this one:
<http://mixergy.com/posterous-heyzap-etacts/>), Posterous's founder pronounced
it to rhyme with frost and preposterous (as in "preposterously easy" IIRC).

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slug
It would be nice if it would pause the movie when he gets up to grab a snack

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BoppreH
Maybe you got up because it's a boring part. I think an autonomous system like
this should assume the minimum possible.

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barista
Of course if you have xbox you can always voice command it to pause if you
really want it to pause when you get up.

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hartror
My cat just got more annoying.

Though I wonder how hard it would be to deal with given the kinetic can see
outlines . . .

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nitrogen
You could design your control system so that the cat can't reach the active
control area.

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carbon14
Very impressive setup he's got. Might have to get him to setup my house.

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quickpost
I wonder what happens when there are multiple people in the house, coming in
and out of rooms, etc.

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nitrogen
At present it considers the zone with the highest occupation as the active
zone. I will be adding better support for multiple people in the future.

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robflynn
This comment made me smile as I thought about how it sounded.

Great work. Looking forward to exploring the code someday.

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huhtenberg
Cool stuff, but I was half-expecting that you would be detecting
touching/tapping light fixtures with a finger and using _that_ to turn them on
and off. Version 2 perhaps? :)

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HyprMusic
Would this actually save electricity? Wouldn't the power used by the Kinect
and the host computer/server outweigh the electricity used by keeping a few
unnecessary lamps on?

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noonespecial
His whole control computer uses around 5 watts. I think a Kinect might take 2
more. It doesn't take much lamp off time to break even and start seeing
savings.

But that's not why geeks do such things. If you're going to take over the
world, the lights simply _must_ automatically come on when entering your lair,
accompanied by a cold, female, disembodied voice intoning " _Wel_ come, _Doc_
tor".

You _are_ planning on doing the voice eventually as well, right Nitro?

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nitrogen
Heh, there's already a voice, but for now it's just espeak or festival, and
it's usually disabled.

And yes, the system uses very, very little power compared to the lights. My
light dimmer uses ~4 watts when off, while each single bulb uses 100 (still
waiting for dimmable fluorescents to be able to dim smoothly to zero). I've
measured the Kinect at ~4W as well. One thing to keep in mind with home
automation is that, yes, it usually does save power, but that's not why you do
it -- it's about saving time.

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HyprMusic
Thanks for the info, I just wondered about power usage to understand the
practicalities of the technology. I understand the other benefits, like the
fact it looks awesome and none of your friend's houses can do it!

------
Newky
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

