openAMI
Introduction
The openAMI project aims to become a flexible and highly customizable ambient intelligence and home automation solution built completely using free software, off the shelf hardware and DIY electronics.
Our final goal is to provide two different frameworks:
Home Automation
A framework providing execution and communication- as well as physical infrastructure in a smarthome environment.
Hardware Components
Infrastructure
In order to keep the overall costs (hardware and power-consumption) at a minimum we use
off-the shelf wifi-routers running openWRT (a embedded linux) to provide
wireless infrastructure as well as entertainment features like audio streaming in separate
rooms.
I/O
For interfacing sensors and actors in the real world, we have developed a small, easy to
build microcontroller board that connects via USB and can be attached to any PC, Laptop,
Server or openWRT based embedded device.
Software Components
amiServer
On the software side we have a central daemon that handles communication, events and
execution.It is written completely in python and currently known as "the amiServer"
Infrastructure
The amiServer implements the following two main components in order to provide the
necessary infrastructure:
User Interface
We aim to provide a set of three different User Interfaces designed specifically for the
following use-cases:
- Mobile
For controlling the system from a smartphone, we provide a customizable javascript-based webinterface. Now there is an Anroid App called ECOntol with a lot new Features. Read the ECOntrol page for more information.
- Desktop
To offer quick access from Desktop Systems or Laptops, there will be a Mac OSX
Dashboard Designer to generate custom controller or monitor widgets.
- HTPC
Of course, Mediacenter integration is a must, we plan to accomplish this by providing
a set of plugins for the popular open source Mediacenter XMBC.
Plugins
In order to make the system easily extendable, the amiServer offers a Plugin Interface.
Ambient Intelligence
//TODO