metaruss

I have tried several different home automation software packages.  They are described below in the order in which I tried them:

X10 ActiveHome

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This is the software package that comes with the X10 ActiveHome kits.  It’s fairly easy to setup and use, but I found it to be unstable and unreliable.  Specifially, the service that interfaces with the X10 CM11A controller (via a serial port) would hang after sending a few commands, especially when requesting status.  I thought that it might be the infamous CM11A-lockup problem, but that proved not to be the case. This may be a Win2k/XP-specific issue, but it rendered the software useless for me, so I quickly began searching for an alternative.

Home Control Assistant

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The “HCA Plus Evaluation” package seemed to be the best alternative for Windows that I could find at the time.  It has a very “visual” and “object oriented” approach to setup.  You can even provide a layout to your home.  One of the nicer things about it was that it came with a powerful macro “language” that allows your setup to be very flexible.  You basically drop little squares onto a grid and create a flowchart describing the action.  It’s nice for anyone who may not have any programming experience.  The main thing that drew me away from this software (besides the price) was the fact that I would need to have a Windows machine up all the time.  While that is a feat in itself, I already had a Linux server running 24/7 which left me searching for a Linux solution.  Another annoying thing about this software is that it hogged 100% of my CPU while it was running (on a 1.4GHz Athlon system).

x10/x10d

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The first tool I found for controlling X10 devices in Linux was a very simple shell utility, aptly named “x10”.  I installed it right from Debian’s repository, so I don’t have a link for it.  It basically would allow you to send X10 commands through a CM11A or similar controller.  I also found a little daemon “x10d” that would listen on the serial port for X10 traffic and display them to stdout.  For the most primative of control, these tools are sufficient.  x10 can be called from a cron job to do things and output from x10d can be parsed by a Perl script to take simple actions.  Things get complicated very quickly when the states of other devices or whether it is light out need to be considered.  For that you really need a truely event-driven interface.

HomeDaemon

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The next tool I tried was HomeDaemon.  Though it is a bit painful to install and configure (read the instructions CAREFULLY), it does get the job done.  It uses a sort of crude language to describe devices and events and gives just enough functionality to do basic, but intelligent events based on motion, etc.  I used this for several months with no problems at all.  It proved to be very reliable.

MisterHouse

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MisterHouse is probably one of the most feature-rich software packages for home automation that I have found.  From an X10 perspective, devices are represented by Perl objects and it is up to you to write the code to handle events as needed.  A simple table file is all that is needed to tell MisterHouse what devices you have.  It will instantiate all the objects for you.  It also provides a large number of utility functions to simplify pretty much anything you would need to do to handle events, so the amount of Perl code that you end up writing is fairly minimal.

I actually found MisterHouse shortly after I got x10/x10d working.  The installation took quite a bit of work and the configuration is daunting.  Unfortunately, it defaults with all kinds of whistles and bells turned on, which makes sifting through the errors a time-consuming process.  It’s also a swiss army knife of features and goes well beyond X10.  It basically tries to do everything, which is why it has such a steep learning curve.  Looking back, I would suggest just following the installation instructions, get the web interface up and turn everything off except what you really need.  It was the plethora of misconfigured and uneeded (for me) features that caused me to abandon MisterHouse and use HomeDaemon for a while instead.