• The IP Camera stuff I intend to finish I just need to find a better way of doing it before I post anymore.
• The Mango beer I created was shit and a real disappointment, I will have to try it again though.
• Solarpanels are still working… YAY however due to my bill being so high (to much computer shit running) It doesn’t really make that much difference I plan on increasing the capacity though…
• Z-Wave stuff, well the whole house is now Z-Waved excluding the bathrooms.. But I will do them eventually!!
• Micro brew system (I will post some information about this later).

I will add some pics to this post later!

Till then, enjoy and have a good night!

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When I get some time I will post my dirty hacked scripts and some graphs too! Currently using the script mentioned above but hacked up to produce the rrd I want and Cacti.
Oh and 5 points goes to anyone who can guess where the title for this post came from!

1) Seagate Dockstar
2) CA-42 Nokia Cable
3) 2 x Logitech C910′s
4) Trendnet TPE-112GS
5) Old Outside CCTV Camera Domes
6) Relevant tools to dismantle the Dockstar and Cameras.

At home I use a POE switch so I try to power everything I can off this.  The Dockstar itself takes 12VDC so i tested the current draw of the unit with both cameras running and it came well under 1AMP, therefore when the 48VDC POE provides is step down to 12VDC I had plenty of current to play with.  Initially I tested with a 100mbit Step down adapter however I had duplexing issue with the network interface on the Dockstar and I couldn’t seem to change these settings.  I have since purchased a Gigabit version to use.  The CA-42 cable is utilised to get serial connectivity to the Dockstar, a really good guide on adding a serial header to the device can be found here : http://www.yourwarrantyisvoid.com/2010/07/21/seagate-dockstar-add-an-accessible-serial-port/ Highly recommended read.  As a result I wont go into this unless I get time

Well that’s about it for the core hardware components of this project, if I have missed anything I will be sure to add it as I go with the guide.

1) Hardware List
2) Installing Openwrt on the Dockstar
3) Kernel Patches to apply to uvcvideo.h
4) Scripts to start cameras on boot/hotplug
5) Modifications to Cameras to suit outside conditions
6) Future additions

Well I hope that covers it all, the next post will cover all hardware that I used to get the particular set up I was after.

Below is a base recipe to play with, as you can see I am going to put some SAAZ-B into this brew as I think this will work well with the Mango.  I plan to brew two different batches, one I will drop in the mango 10 mins before flame out.  This should allow enough time to kill any nasties in the mango however we run the risk of destroying some of the flavour so the second batch will have the mango pitched in the secondary.  I will either pasteurise the mango at 65 degs for 30 mins before pitching or just throw it in. I am hoping if I decide to just throw it in, there will be enough alcohol in the beer after the primary fermentation to kill any bacteria they may be introduced.  So I am undecided as to which path I should take….

Anyways below is the proposed basic recipe for my beer (minus mango and yeast).  I haven’t picked a yeast yet as I am waiting for my yeast guru at http://www.proculture.com.au/ to suggest one of his fantastic strains.

Base Brew for Experimenting

0- No Style Chosen

No Yeast Chosen

It has been a long time since I have posted and a lot has happened, both with the Home Automation, Work and the Brewing…. Where do I begin???
I know, I shall begin with the Z-Wave Stuff. So far out of the 6 Z-wave in-wall devices I have purchased 2 have been faulty. They have since been replaced (mad props to www.smarthome.com.au). With one of the faulty Z-Wave devices I had I managed to add it to the controller, but could not control it, nor could I remove the pairing. This was a huge pain in the back side as there is no implementation in LinuxMCE to force remove a paired device from the USB Sticks Database.  So what happens in a situation like this? You have to remove and pair everything up again, that’s fine if you only have a few devices but not fine if you have 30+.  No problem I found a windows program posted on a forum (can’t remember where but most likely the Linuxmce Forum) that can permanently remove paired devices in the even they are faulty and can’t be unpaired gracefully..

That program is here.

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and here are some photos after they completed it.

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Not too shabby and it has added a bit of storage up top, so hopefully now I can get both cars into the Garage. *Yay*

So no I have my minimote configured to add devices and to control certain lighting scenes in my house, at this stage it only handles the Kitchen light on one scene and the dining and lounge on another.  I am thinking that a few more minimotes might be worth while for different parts of the house and for different scenes, but we shall see…

The 2 x In-Wall appliance modules are to replace my Dimming modules as they seem to not work to well with the LED downlights have.  I believe this is due to the lead/trailing edge dimming. Search wikipedia if you want to know more about how dimming works.

Here are some poor iphone quality photos!

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