{"id":1845,"date":"2010-04-21T08:11:57","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T07:11:57","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-12-30T11:13:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T11:13:41","slug":"my-automated-home-soitjes-soit-s-digital-home-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/security\/my-automated-home-soitjes-soit-s-digital-home-server.html","title":{"rendered":"My Automated Home : Soitjes Soit&#8217;s Digital Home Server"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"My  Automated Home\" alt=\"My Automated Home\" src=\"\/images\/news\/mah_ss_2.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the first of our new &#8216;My Automated Home&#8217; series,\u00a0 Soitjes Soit talks us through the idea behind his home brew Digital Home Server.\u00a0 Created using an inexpensive Mimo USB monitor and a mini-ITX PC, the system provides a variety of functions around the home&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"sj-gblock\">\n<script language=\"javascript\">\n<!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5598479065369258\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 300; \ngoogle_ad_height = 250; \ngoogle_ad_format = \"300x250_as\"; \ngoogle_ad_channel = \"7058025304\"; \ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\"; \ngoogle_color_border = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_link = \"52a79f\"; \ngoogle_color_url = \"CFFFDF\"; \ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\"; \n\/\/--> \n<\/script>\n<script language=\"javascript\"  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script>\n<\/div><strong>How it started<\/strong> &#8211; I was looking for an Internet Radio player.\u00a0 One of those little hardware devices like the ones from TerraTec. But none them were really flexible.\u00a0 Well, you could listen to Internet radio, but not much more.\u00a0 Then the other day I was surfing on the web and stumbled on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26redirect%3Dtrue%26ref_%3Dsr%5Fnr%5Fi%5F0%26keywords%3Dmimo%2520monitor%26qid%3D1271789255%26rh%3Di%253Aelectronics%252Ck%253Amimo%2520monitor&amp;tag=markmccall&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450\">Mimo Monitors<\/a> website, where they sell those little 7\u201d monitors, powered only by USB.\u00a0 At that moment I decided to built my own Internet Radio player, which I would install on a PC.\u00a0 But during the course of the development many things have been added, so now I talk about my Digital Home Server.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Hardware<\/strong> &#8211; I bought a mini-ITX motherboard (Intel D945gclf).\u00a0 I read on forum that the CPU was not very silent, and yes, it was not silent at all.\u00a0 So I threw out the fan, and<\/p>\n<p>installed a passive cooler.\u00a0 I also replaced the PSU with fan with a PicoPSU, which has no fan.\u00a0 So now it was pretty silent.\u00a0 The last component which makes noise is the hard disk, but despite many attempts I never found a good alternative.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"My  Automated Home\" alt=\"My Automated Home\" src=\"\/images\/news\/mah_ss_1.jpg\" width=\"334\" height=\"311\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"2\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Although I tried many (booting from USB stick, booting from USB hard disk, booting from CF card etc), I&#8217;ll just have to wait until the SSD become cheaper.\u00a0 With a pair of speakers and a little hub my system was complete.\u00a0 Now I needed an operation system and an Internet radio player.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Software<\/strong> &#8211; The operating system is Windows XP.\u00a0 I have made many attempts to reduce the OS size with XPLite and nLite, but in the end I had too many problems.\u00a0 Now I just use standard XP.\u00a0 Why XP ?\u00a0 I started on Linux, but there is simply no decent development environment for Linux.\u00a0 I tried Lazarus but that was very unstable.\u00a0 I have used Delphi about 15 years ago, and had very good memories.\u00a0 Now, would Delphi still exist ?\u00a0 Actually yes, although the product has gone through some difficult times.\u00a0 Now I was facing some interesting challenges :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The USB monitor size is 7&#8243;, with a resolution of 800&#215;480.\u00a0 That is a small monitor, believe me.<\/li>\n<li>No keyboard or mouse, only a touchscreen to operate all modules<\/li>\n<li>Multitasking : listen to audio, video or make phone calls, all at the same time<\/li>\n<li>The last time I programmed was 15 years ago, and I hate making designs and testing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But Delphi is an incredible powerful development environment.\u00a0 Combined with a good graphical library I was able to make some very nice screens, especially on a small screen.<\/p>\n<p>I actually wrote the program twice.\u00a0 The first attempt was still rather ugly, and I had difficulties because it was so long ago I had programmed (I do something completely different in my professional life).\u00a0 When working on the Internet Radio Player I started to have other ideas, and this is what you can find today in my Digital Home Server :<\/p>\n<p>Audio &#8211; A streaming MP3 player capable of playing local MP3 files and Internet radio streams.\u00a0 While listening to music, you can see the time, consult the weather forecast, or look at the playlist.\u00a0 It can also parse the RSS feeds for podcasts, so that I-\u00a0 can follow a few podcasts to which I listen regularly.<\/p>\n<p>Photo &#8211; Such a small 7&#8243; monitor looks like a kind of photo frame, so I programmed a photo slideshow.\u00a0 The module has 172 transitions that are rendered between images.<\/p>\n<p>Video &#8211; This module would not have made a lot of sense on a 7&#8243; monitor.\u00a0 Instead, the small monitor is used to control the movie which is displayed on a second monitor.\u00a0 Note that this is not a video streaming module, it&#8217;s just playing a local video file.<\/p>\n<p>Calendar &#8211; From a software point of view a real nightmare.\u00a0 I use Google Calendar a lot (free SMS notification, handy !!).\u00a0 But the Google API is cumbersome and very badly documented.\u00a0 But my module allows to consult my Google Calender.<\/p>\n<p>Calculator &#8211; A little calculator.\u00a0 Not much to tell about this.<\/p>\n<p>Phone &#8211; Another very difficult module.\u00a0 The idea was to control Skype via the little monitor.\u00a0 I finally succeeded, and if you use video in Skype it&#8217;s displayed on the second monitor.\u00a0 I experimented a lot with bluetooth for this module.<\/p>\n<p>Stopwatch &#8211; A stopwatch, counting down from any number of minutes.\u00a0 Actually a request from my girlfriend.\u00a0 She needs this when she is baking bread.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Things I like in the current setup<\/strong> &#8211; The choice for the small 7&#8243; usb touchscreen was defninitely a good idea.\u00a0 It forced me to be careful in not putting too much on the screen, and at the same time it had to look nice because it&#8217;s standing in my living room !\u00a0 It really looks cool.\u00a0 The mini-ITX PC was good as well, and quite cheap.\u00a0 You can make them silent, and they are still quite powerful.\u00a0 More than enough for what it&#8217;s doing now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What needs improvement<\/strong> &#8211; The focus is multimedia, but I would like to extend my Digital Home Server in a real Home Automation server, but then the current architecture has some limitations.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve already done quite a bit of research with USB connectors, Arduino microcontrollers, X10 and all that other home automation stuff.\u00a0 The main problem is to find an open solution, which I can integrate in my Digital Home Server v2.0.<\/p>\n<p>More details and screenshots, and explanation of what going on can be found on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalhomeserver.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.digitalhomeserver.net<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26redirect%3Dtrue%26ref_%3Dsr%5Fnr%5Fi%5F0%26keywords%3Dmimo%2520monitor%26qid%3D1271789255%26rh%3Di%253Aelectronics%252Ck%253Amimo%2520monitor&amp;tag=markmccall&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450\">Mimo Monitors<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0: \u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:tips@automatedhome.co.uk\">Send us Your &#8216;My Automated Home&#8217; Story<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Want More?<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ottomate\">Follow us<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AutomatedHomeUK\" target=\"_blank\">Like us<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook, or subscribe to our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds2.feedburner.com\/automatedhome\">RSS feed<\/a>. 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