Posted: December 10 2002 at 14:06 | IP Logged

Ok, here's the scenario.  I'm looking for automation control software for my Home Theater.  so far i like PowerHome.  I want to use a "remote control"system.  i have available to me from work a number of tablet PCs which are no longer in use.  I wanted to use one of the as the "remote" it willl run on a wireless network.  my question is - is there a way to make some sort of front end for the controls or buttons that connects to another pc that actually runs the commands?  All of he interfaces will be plugged into this PC, and all the tablet does is show the buttons fullscreen.  this will prevent me from having to hard wire the tablet pc and making it a permanent mount by, let's say the couch or on a table.  The only other option i can think of is to use PC Anywhere or similar and display the other PCs sceen on the tablet, but the tablets are not very fast. so the images will be iffy.  Any ideas or help will be appreciated.  Please email me if you have any suggestions.

paul

Posted: December 10 2002 at 15:45 | IP Logged

Paul,

An idea,  2 little programs. The first is a graphic interface (easy in VB6) that runs on your tablet and sends simple (fast) code wirelessly to the "big PC" There, a second even smaler program translates the simple recieved codes into  keystrokes you send to Powerhome, running on the same PC. Powerhome will to all the thinking and descision-making. The RedRat will drive your theater-components.

What kind of processor do these tablets have ?

Posted: December 10 2002 at 15:54 | IP Logged

233 MHz Pentium MMX processor, 64 MB SDRAM

They are Fujitsu Stylistic LTs

your idea would be great, if I knew the slightest bit of programming, but sadly I don't.

I was thinking more of a client / server app.

Posted: December 10 2002 at 17:10 | IP Logged

You'd be amazed by how fast you'd get the hang of VB6

For the programs you need, its nothing more than drawing a goodlooking interface screen and adding a few lines of code.

For the complicated things like serial transmitting ect... VB6 is loaded with add-ons you just have to include in your project.

I'd by a good book and i am shure you'll be writing the programs within a week.

Visual Basic is exellent for beginners, trust me.

Posted: December 10 2002 at 20:00 | IP Logged

You could also create web pages for PowerHome and just use a web browser over the wireless connection to the main PC. I'm planning to do the same thing with a PDA.

Tony

Posted: December 10 2002 at 21:12 | IP Logged

Paul,

You are correct in that you could use a PCAnywhere type of program.  The best would be VNC because it's totally free!!  You could run either the VNCViewer on the tablet or actually use a java applet via the browser to view the main PC.  It would probably be fast enough even on the MMX 233.

As Tony suggested, you could also create the interface as a web page and access the main PC via a browser.  This would require you to create your own web pages though since PowerHome does not replicate the Control Center via the internal web server yet.  Im looking at how to do this so it may be available in the near future.  Writing your own pages would not be difficult and might even be fun.

As Didi suggested, you could also put together a very simple VB frontend which could use either the Socket Server to communicate with PowerHome directly or use the Microsoft Internet Transfer Control ActiveX and have it communicate directly with the built-in web server to perform any valid PowerHome formula.

In the last couple of versions, support has been added into PowerHome so that it can be moved into a client / server type of app so that a main PC could be connected to the hard-wired controllers and a light-weight frontend could be executed on a client PC to directly control the server app.  This is one of the reasons that the Socket Server has been integrated into PowerHome.  Alas, Im still at least a couple of versions away from having this functionality available so you would have to brew your own at this time.

So, to sum up...you can use VNC to remotely control PowerHome.  I would give this option a try and see what kind of response you get.  You can get VNC from this link: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ .

You can whip up some web pages with the commands and layout you like.  You would not even have to use PSP and could use simple HTML commands and call the ph-cgi sendkeys function. 

Lastly, you could also put together a frontend using VB (or any other language) and control PowerHome via the Socket Server or the Internet Transfer Control.

Hope this helps,

Dave.

Posted: December 11 2002 at 19:10 | IP Logged

I would recommend Radmin (www.radmin.com) over VNC (I tried both). It is only $35.

Tony