Distributed Living

Distributed Living is a name I give to the use of technology to make life easier. Other call it Home Automation, but to me there is more to this than making the lights come on with a timeswitch

The idea is to take all the small islands of electronics that live with us and bring them together to form a single distributed community of devices all working to make things easier for their human masters.

As the logo attempts to show, the humble kettle could be transformed into a teas made if it was plugged into the distributed network and asked to boil as we get out of bed. This is not hard to achieve using relatively affordable commercial devices today, but giving a time switch the intelligence to know we are on holiday today and will be having a lie in is rather more difficult.

Home Automation is a term often used to describe this field, however Distributed Living can be more than just your home- if a home radio knows you want to listen to an important program, the car radio can be told too perhaps by your personal digital assistant (e.g. a palmtop computer).

Several years ago I started writing my own protocol to achieve this, but increasing work commitments prevented me from building much more than foundations. Since then wider standards such as XML and others with more dedicationand skill have created promising standards/ software/ hardware such as xAP, andxPL.

As my soldering iron was plugged in again recently to make a nice USB PIC programmer,there may be more happening soon!

To keep up with events, I can definately reccomend Mark McCall's Automated Homesite.

Distributed Living Site Index
	Installing and integrating with Honeywell Smartfit Replacing 'standard' central heating controls with Honeywell Smartfit and my efforts to integrate it with home automation.
	Modifying a CD-50 to give a PC Caller ID interface Can't afford a Meteor CLI interface? There is a cheaper way.
	My own system For several years, a computer has been watching my every move sitting quietly in a corner. Not that anything extra-ordinary might happen, I just want to avoid silly devices like light switches!
	The Distributed Automation Protocol For reference only, my attempts to define a communication standard suitable for use across a network of home automation servers. Old, unfinished and superceeded! :-)
	Past Projects From IrDA to temperature measurement, there's probably a 80% complete project somewhere in the workshop.
	WS467 Modifications A few years ago it was impossible to get UK 230V wall switch X10 modules so after finding instructions on the 'net, 4 US 110v modules were modified.
	LW10U UK Pattress Mounting Lamp Module Read the instructions when installing these devices! I didn't and fried one with a low energy compact fourescent bulb.