Another novel (and silly) use for Roomie
October 11th, 2010I’ve been working (rather obsessively) on Roomie for the past week. In specific, I have rewritten the XML-based protocol that allows the desktop client to communicate with the web service. (Say “hi” to it here.) The new library (which I call WebCommunicator) is sooo much easier to use than my old one, but still has all the nifty (and important) encryption and anti-hacking features. I will eventually publish the protocol as an independent library. (Give me a bit to use it more and work out all the kinks.)
But enough technical talk. Lets get to serious business. Here I have a little RoomieScript that I wrote, just as a proof of concept.
<RoomieScript>
<ZWave.PowerOff DeviceName="Coffee Pot" />
<Core.Loop>
<ZWave.WaitForChange DeviceName="Coffee Pot" PollInterval="5 Seconds" />
<ZWave.PowerOff DeviceName="Coffee Pot" />
<RoomieBot.TextDavid Text="No coffee!" />
</Core.Loop>
</RoomieScript>
Roomie gets some CSS schooling
June 24th, 2010This week I have been furiously re-writing a few key elements of the Roomie website. Specifically, I scrapped the old device button controls, which you can see here. They were ok, but they were very rigid in use, offering only two different pictures to back the buttons. Zooming on mobile devices didn’t work so great either, since the images were PNGs, raster graphics. Now I have created a button framework entirely in CSS, HTML, and ASP.NET controls. Because of this, I can easily create new kinds of controls completely in code, and they even zoom cleanly as well. My original vision for this was to enable the user to create “virtual device controls”, which would display next to the regular device controls.
Roomie Mobile Update
January 28th, 2010Remember Roomie? Today I updated Roomie Mobile. This version includes a second dimming option and more touch-friendly buttons. Check it out in the video below.
Roomie is getting more powerful!
August 3rd, 2009I’ve been making more improvements to Roomie (which I still haven’t released). Now a RoomieScript can send a RoomieScript to another computer. This makes collaborated scripts much easier. The script below gets two of my computers, the Home Server and Desktop Computer, to wake me up in the morning. The Home Server handles the Z-Wave stuff—turning the lights on and off—and the Desktop Computer handles the music.
Roomie Mobile Demo
May 25th, 2009Since school is out and work hasn’t started yet, I have finally been able to catch up on some coding. I know it’s geeky, but it’s fun! Today I made some updates to Roomie, adding variables and functions to RoomieScript, the scripting language that the Roomie desktop application interprets. Since I got a smart phone I have become in mobile development. Today I took an hour or so to develop a mobile version of the Roomie website. (Right now both websites are technically open to the public, but without the desktop application, which I have yet to release, the websites are useless to outsiders.) 
Here’s a video:
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