Home Automation

Barely Ready for Prime Time

Maybe

 

FRAGMENTED

Many standards:  X10, PLC, ZigBee, Insteon, etc.

 

Many architectures, controls, etc.

 

HARD

Home Security; Power savings; Lighting Schemes; Home messaging; Media Centers; Temperature; Roombas; Phones

 

Each has special devices and interfaces

 

Interactions hard (Hey, you walked out the door without your phone!) and each only gives a bit more.

 

Where is the boundry?

 

HARDER

Mostly plug level control

Issues with security, closed source,

UL

two 9's reliability, style

Future may be EStar-like Government Program

 

Free Education Online

TED talks (www.ted.com/talks)

EngEdu at Google Videos

Wikipedia (for mathematics, Linux documentation, etc.)

MIT OpenCourseware, Other colleges followed

David Allen's Getting Things Done

A get everything out of your head and organized so that you work faster book.

Buy a labeler, white on black;

 

label files

 

file them alphabetically in a file draw next to you

 

Python

A newish language (you dead?)

For Zombies

duck-typed

 

a = 3; a = “Me, You, Them”.split(“, ”); a.sort()

 

quick idioms, C-like syntax

 

titles = [m.title for m in movies if “Lucas” in m.producers]

 

interpreted language

 

batteries included

 

profilers, codecs, Unicode, HTML/CSS, databases, color conversions, diffs, ftp,scheduling, sound, ...

 

vs Ruby

co-evolves, competes, gets better

 

larger teams than Ruby's 4 programmers. 

 

Less funky code/trust

 

vs Java: 

descended from,

smaller teams, less than Java's Millions

more funky code/trust

No real protection; type safety; etc.

PQR Python Quick Reference

Python Challenge

 

 

PIL

Python Imaging Library

A basic imaging and image formats library for Python

 

im = Image.load("pict.bmp")

im.crop((100,100,400,400))\

.thumbnail((128,128))\

.save("face.jpg")

 

Also handles color mapping, basic drawing, etc.

 

Decent tutorial and documentation, but not standard form.

 

Slightly different license (attribution style)

Not in Python "Batteries Included"

Hard To Find Without Keyword

 

Google is your friend only sometimes

 

Charles Merriam

408.368.6050

charles.merriam@gmail.com

www.charlesmerriam.com

Looking for a fun job!

Sensors?  Things that move?

Engineer?  Sales Engineer?  Intern?