Comments on: iPhone Remote Control – For my Christmas lights

By: Aaron Vanderbye

Aaron Vanderbye — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:05:57 +0000

Thanks for the info. The MySQL table info gives me a nudge in the right direction, and some food for thought re: how to make it work. I’ve been using the built-in web server pages off the X10 Dispatcher program and accessing them on my WinMo device through the browser, but have been looking for some way to make the interface a little nicer and finger-friendly for the small screen. Also been bothered that I couldn’t seem to find a way to poll for status of the device, so the PHP/MySQL combo seemed an intriguing idea.

Best of luck to you, and happy holidays!

By: intelliadmin

intelliadmin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:38:10 +0000

On the MySQL side I have 1 table in a database…it is called LIGHTS.

This table has 6 entries:

NAME, DESCRIPTION, LOCATION, HouseID, DeviceID, Status

The first three are obvious, the HouseID and DeviceID are X10 House, and Device identifiers. Status is a 0 or 1 value 0=Off 1=On

My situation is a little different, since the webserver that has the PHP and MySql is about 5000 miles from my house…so it would not be possible for the webserver to execute an app that sends the signals.

So with the above database I simply have a PHP script that accepts POST data with authentication and commands…LIKE ADD_ENTRY, or UPDATE_STATUS. These are sent from the iPhone. They look like regular web page posts from the PHP side, but they are hand crafted requests built into my iPhone app.

Then on the server that sits in my house, it has the FireCracker, and runs a C++ application (That I wrote) does a GET from the webserver with an action called GET_XML. This C++ app parses the XML, and then will take action based on status values. If it sees a zero, then it sends an off command to that HouseID and DeviceID.

3 parts are not totally necessary…you could bring it down to just a webserver and the iPhone, but since I don’t have a public IP for the internet at my house…it is not workable.

I can’t post any code yet, since It looks pretty bad, and I have passwords hardcoded (Don’t want the entire net turning my christmas lights on and off )

If there is more interest I might post another article with more info…Plus I just got approval from iPhone for their dev program…may be able to let others play with this if I get the time.

By: Aaron Vanderbye

Aaron Vanderbye — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:52:44 +0000

I’d love to learn a little more about your PHP/MySQL solution. I dabble with both, but am really not proficient enough to set up something without seeing a sample in front of me from which to learn.

To tell you a little about my setup. I run an ActiveHome CM15A X10 device (USB interface versus the Firecracker’s serial interface) and modules from a Black And Decker FreeWire set (X10 compatible). I did some searching around the ‘Net and found X10 Dispatcher (http://x10dispatcher.com/) to replace the default ActiveHome software.

X10 Dispatcher allows you to program simple X10 commands or more complex macros, and allows the user to set up a locally-hosted web server that provides an interface to trigger commands and macros on demand, or set them on a schedule. The problem is that I can’t seem to find the pages served by the application, so I don’t know how they are triggered, whether it’s through some sort of PHP or scripting, or through Windows APIs.

I’ve set up simple PHP scripts to trigger the ahcmd.exe, which provides a command line interface for X10 commands, but can’t figure out how to query for the status of devices. Your solution of using MySQL is, I assume, to store the status of the device by recording the last command sent to each X10 address.

I’d love to hear about your methods, as I have thought about implementing something similar with a locally-hosted server and a Windows Mobile device.

Regards,
Aaron Vanderbye