The overall idea…
The 1wire temperature sensor is connected to computer with a USB interface. The scripts do magic. The X-10 interface is connected with serial interface. The fan is plugged into an appliance module.

I’ve been a fan of the ExtremeTech books, so I picked up a copy of Weather Toys to get me started.

The interface I used the DS9490R 1wire USB adapter.
http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=1503

The temperature sensors I used are DS18S20 1-Wire Digital Thermometer.
http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=26&products_id=93

To connect the sensors and interface:
Cat5e
RJ14 plug
Dual Modular Surface Jack 6 Conductor (only using 4 Conductors)

Additional wiring info
http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/howto_wiring_diagram.php?referer=howto_adaptors.php

Once you have the hardware connected, test it with the manufacturer’s viewer to make sure everything is communicating. I used my windows XP laptop for this.
http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/software/1wire/OneWireViewer.cfm

Once that’s working, I’m going to go back to my linux box.

I’m a fan of linux. The price is right, it has a pretty large, helpful user base. I chose Ubuntu because it’s my favorite distro this week.

Ubuntu server
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/serveredition

Once that’s running and updated, I’m going to install owfs.
http://owfs.org/

You can install from source, but I prefer packages
http://ppa.launchpad.net/smurf/ubuntu/pool/main/o/owfs/
libow-perl_2.7p14-1_i386.deb
owfs_2.7p14-1_i386.deb

These packages depend on an older version of perl, so I modified the .deb for the version of perl installed with Jaunty.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=636724

Once owfs is installed, I launched the owfs server using a USB device on port 3000.

/opt/owfs/bin/owserver -u -p 3000

To see if you’re able to read you’re sensors, use owdir to list connected devices

/opt/owfs/bin/owdir -s 127.0.0.1:3000

Mine works correctly. one of my temperature sensors is /10.F0B9D5010800
Next I list the attributes I can read from the sensor.

/opt/owfs/bin/owdir -s 127.0.0.1:3000 /10.F0B9D5010800

I’m only interested in the temperature right now, so I read the temperature

/opt/owfs/bin/owread -s 127.0.0.1:3000 /10.F0B9D5010800/temperature

I live in the US and prefer to read my temperature in Fahrenheit. Use -F

/opt/owfs/bin/owread -F -s 127.0.0.1:3000 /10.F0B9D5010800/temperature

If everything seems to be working, you might consider making owserver start with the computer.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBootupHowto

I have some crappy perl I threw together in a hurry to control the fan and web page generation.

The graphing is just a modified version of http://www.it-slav.net/blogs/?p=75
It works so well that the only changes I made were to rename the script to graphtemp.pl, replace the sensors with my own, and put my website on the graph.

To control the fan, I use X10 and heyu
http://heyu.tanj.com/

The interface I used is the CM11a serial X10 interface.
The module I used to control the fan is the AM466.

I assume reader knows how to make symlinks and adjust permissions accordingly.

# Crontab -l ####################################

* * * * * /usr/bin/perl /home/raging/hvac.pl
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/perl /home/raging/graphtemp.pl > /home/raging/graphtemplog.txt
*/15 * * * * /usr/bin/perl /home/raging/fanmaster.pl  >> /home/raging/fanmasterlog.txt

# cat fanmaster.pl ##############################
#!/usr/bin/perl
# fanmaster.pl
sleep 10;
use OW;
OW::init("-F localhost:3000");

($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(time);

my $attic = OW::get("10.2FA8D5010800/temperature");
$attic =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

my $outside = OW::get("10.F0B9D5010800/temperature");
$outside =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

printf "%4d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d\t",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min;
if (abs($attic - $outside) < 10){
printf "Less than 10 Degrees - Turning fan OFF\t%.1f\t%.1f\t%.1f\n", abs($attic - $outside), $outside, $attic;
system("/usr/local/bin/heyu off b16");
} else {
printf "More than 10 Degrees - Turning fan ON \t%.1f\t%.1f\t%.1f\n", abs($attic - $outside), $outside, $attic;
system("/usr/local/bin/heyu on b16");
}

# cat hvac.pl ###################################
#!/usr/bin/perl
# hvac.pl
use OW;
OW::init("-F localhost:3000");
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(time);

my $duct = OW::get("10.4572D5010800/temperature");
$duct =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

my $shelf = OW::get("10.72B1D5010800/temperature");
$shelf =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

my $attic = OW::get("10.2FA8D5010800/temperature");
$attic =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

my $outside = OW::get("10.F0B9D5010800/temperature");
$outside =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;

open (HVAC, ">/var/www/hvac.htm");
print HVAC "<html><head><title>Temperature</title><meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"10\" /></head><body>\n";
print HVAC "<font size=\"+2\">Temperature Monitor</font><br>\n";
printf HVAC "Last Updated: " . "%4d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d\n<br>",$year+1900,$mon+1,$mday,$hour,$min;
if ($duct < 57){
print HVAC "AC cycle is probably <b><font color=\"#0000FF\">ON</font></b><br>\n";
} else {
print HVAC "AC cycle is probably <b><font color=\"#FF0000\">OFF</font></b><br>\n";
}
printf HVAC "<b>Attic - Outside Difference:</b> " . "%.2f\n<br>", abs($attic - $outside);
print HVAC "<img src=\"hvac/temp0-day.png\"><img src=\"hvac/temp0-week.png\"><br><b>Current Outside Temp:</b> $outside<br><br>\n";
print HVAC "<img src=\"hvac/temp1-day.png\"><img src=\"hvac/temp1-week.png\"><br><b>Current Attic Temp:</b> $attic<br><br>\n";
print HVAC "<img src=\"hvac/temp2-day.png\"><img src=\"hvac/temp2-week.png\"><br><b>Current Duct Temp:</b> $duct<br><br>\n";
print HVAC "<img src=\"hvac/temp3-day.png\"><img src=\"hvac/temp3-week.png\"><br><b>Current Bedroom Temp:</b> $shelf<br><br>\n";
print HVAC '</body></html>';
close (HVAC);
#################################################

How’d I do it? It turns out that getting started with Adobe Air is ridiculously simple. Just…

Install
http://get.adobe.com/air/

Install
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/tools/sdk/

Unzip and read devappshtml.pdf
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/AIR1_5_html_docs.zip

Also cool
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ajax/articles/air_ajax_developers.html

I followed the “Hello World” example to get started. Pretty simple!

This is what I ended up with… if you wanna take a look
http://www.ragingcomputer.com/helloworld.zip

Features
It captures 1 picture every 5 minutes. Storage capacity is cheap, so after using excel to make some projections, this worked out to be a reasonable rate for our resources. After some more research, I came to the conclusion that flash video has compatibility with most visitors while being relatively bandwidth efficient, but other codecs could be used. I originally got the idea from http://mydebian.blogdns.org/?p=261 but it wasn’t quite awesome enough, so I rewrote using Perl and expanded upon it.

Requirements - This document assumes you have:
Knowledge using Linux… You’re on your own for installing and configuring

Hardware: The General Idea

• PC capable of running Linux
• Capture card that is supported by V4L ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video4Linux )
• Video Camera

Hardware: What we’re using

• HP D350MT - P4 2.6GHz - 512MB Ram - 80 GB SATA hard drive - retired from classroom
• Cheap generic capture card using bttv chipset
• Fixed Security Camera

Software used by the scripts:
I chose Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, but distro isn’t very important.
Note: The rest of the document is assuming use of ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Added packages: installed through apt-get or synaptic
There is more software used, but it is included in Ubuntu 8.04

• ssh - not a requirement, but great for multitasking and any maintenance - connected from my windows workstation using putty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY )
• xawtv
• ffmpeg
• perlmagick
• smbfs
• fswebcam - http://www.firestorm.cx/fswebcam/ - downloaded .deb and installed using either dpkg or gdebi

Perl Modules:
Date::Manip (I used cpan to install, easiest method)

Script Overview:
This entire project is pretty much glued together by cron.

autocam.sh

• Runs every 5 minutes
• Captures video frame using a strict naming scheme - YYYYMMDDHHmm.jpg

buildcam.pl

• Runs once a day at 3 minutes past midnight
• Builds video from pictures for the day that just ended
• Builds based on picture filename, not file creation time so it will still function after restoring from backup
• Creates thumbnails by resizing picture from 10:00AM of first day in video
• Creates playlist based on thumbnail and video files
• Copies playlist, thumbnails, and videos to webserver
• Creates backup and copies to network location

autocam.sh
buildcam.pl

Pulling it all together
I’m going to explain this backwards, from presentation, to how to get it there.

Web Page
One of the most important parts of this project is how it will be displayed to visitors to our site. I let our webmaster handle most of this.

JW FLV Media Player
We decided upon JW FLV Media Player. It is very easy to use.

• http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/
• Player - free for noncommercial use!
• It has a Setup Wizard
• http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard?example=16
• Recommend use full path to playlist file
• Playlist file requires full path to videos and thumbnails

Alternatives - not quite as awesome as JW FLV Player
A quick search turned up a few alternatives

• http://www.mcmediaplayer.com/
• http://as3flvplayer.sourceforge.net/
• http://tmtdigital.com/project/dash_player
• http://sonettic-cinema.com/products/players/free/cinema-free.htm
• http://www.osflv.com/
• http://flowplayer.org/index.html

Web server
Content shared with the internet has to be served from somewhere. We’re already using Microsoft IIS. Since we already have a webserver exposed to the internet, might as well use it to host the time-lapse video too. Also, we know more aobut securing IIS than apache. So hosting videos from the computer that generates them is unappealing. This was an easy decision.

Flash Security
This caused quite a headache when we were trying to play content published to our live webserver from the test webserver… it just didn’t work. I fired up the Firefox extension Tamper Data and loaded the page. It was showing a 404 for crossdomain.xml. A quick search later brought me to http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/crossdomain_policy_file_spec.html.

For example, if playlist.xml points to http://www.example.com/video.flv, http://example.com/video.flv is on a different domain and requires crossdomain.xml

Copy files to webserver
The webserver has a windows file share and a local user account for this project. This local user account has access to nothing else. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to copy files from a linux computer to a windows file share. The command “mount.cifs” (part of smbfs) will mount a windows file share. Then all that’s left is to copy files to the mountpoint and umount to close the connection.

Backup
tar/gzip all the pictures and copy to fileshare for safe keeping. Hard drives die more often than I’d like.

Update: 03/02/2010
Updated links.

This has been in place and working since December of 2008. We have had relatively few problems. The biggest of which were due to extended power failure and issues with the video feed.

If you use Linux, there aren’t many projects that even require thinking about any of this. Just something to keep in mind.

Luckily, Microsoft® has already thought of this.

Benefits of using “Package for CD”

• All linked media is included in destination folder.
• TrueType fonts can be packaged as well
• PowerPoint Viewer® is included (in case presentation computer doesn’t have correct version)
• Presentation will display as intended (no missing media or substituted fonts)

When the presentation is finished, working correctly and ready to present:

Publish -> Package for CD

Embedding TrueType fonts will ensure the presentation looks the same on any computer it’s shown on.

If the presentation is to be distributed, I would recommend removing extra metadata to avoid potential embarrassment.

The next step is to select the destination for the packaged presentation, probably your flash drive.

After presentation is packaged, close the Package for CD dialog.

Playback
To show presentation, double click “play.bat”

Microsoft product screen shots reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

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