Re: (Mostly OT) Using a remote with perl?

[andreychek]

I was considering doing something like this using X10. You could do everything you need with the Active Home hardware. The pieces you would use are:

• X10 Remote Control
• X10 Transceiver Module (take the remote's RF signals and push them across your power line)
• X10 Computer Interface

With those, you could generate signals on the remote, and see them from your computer.

On the software end of things, there's a number of choices available to you. Misterhouse is one of my favorites. It's a software package written in Perl that interacts with X10 devices. You could easily program it to control XMMS based on what X10 signals it seems going across your power line.

This sounds like a fun project. Good luck with it,

-Eric

[BUU]

This looked interesting, but when I looked at Misterhouse it only had a few events listed from x10 remotes:

  XM1MK
  X - every command will start with this
  M1 - the house code and unit
  MK - the house code and the command

  K here might be any of the following:
    J    - ON
    K    - OFF
    L    - brighten
    M    - dim 
    dd%  - Sets module to this brightness level
    +-dd - Bright/dims by this amount

It doesn't seem like just these events would be enough to program a decent interface.

[blahblahblah]

I have an x10 RF remote (part of the boom2000 kit) hooked up to my windows machine. It has a setup screen which lets you assign functions to all of the buttons on the remote. I guess Mr. House just chose not to use them?

There's some perl code for listening to x10 remotes in Talking Winamp RF remote control. I've never gotten around to trying it though.

[andreychek]

I think you can still do what you want. In setting up X10, you would set your remote for a particular "House Code", by default it's set to "A". Within each House Code, you have 16 Unit Code's that you can use.

And then, within each Unit Code, you have the ability to turn it on, off, brighten, and dim.

What I would probably do is make it so that pressing "Unit Code #1 On" in the remote has xmms start playing. "Unit Code #2 On" would go forward a song, "Unit Code #3 On" would go back a song, etc.

Good luck

-Eric