[RockerC]

***MOD EDIT: these posts were split off from another thread so that we can talk about how awesome home automation support in Kod would be --Ned ***

Very exciting news, congrats! How many student slots do you think that the Kodi will get for GSoC this year?

Do you believe there is any hope to see some Home Automation and Lightning Control projects for Kodi this year?

I would love to see a single GUI and addons API for Home Automation in Kodi similar to the PVR concept!

Home Automation is all the all the rage now and sadly absent from Kodi, so a unified interface would be great!

[mkortstiege]

Do you believe there is any hope to see some Home Automation and Lightning Control projects for Kodi this year?

I would love to see a single GUI and addons API for Home Automation in Kodi similar to the PVR concept!

Home Automation is all the all the rage now and sadly absent from Kodi, so a unified interface would be great!

IMO home automation is nothing we want in core.

[Martijn]

Do you believe there is any hope to see some Home Automation and Lightning Control projects for Kodi this year?

I would love to see a single GUI and addons API for Home Automation in Kodi similar to the PVR concept!

Home Automation is all the all the rage now and sadly absent from Kodi, so a unified interface would be great!

IMO home automation is nothing we want in core.

should be a binary add-on and provided an interface between Kodi and the outside world

[RockerC]

Do you believe there is any hope to see some Home Automation and Lightning Control projects for Kodi this year?

I would love to see a single GUI and addons API for Home Automation in Kodi similar to the PVR concept!

Home Automation is all the all the rage now and sadly absent from Kodi, so a unified interface would be great!

IMO home automation is nothing we want in core.

should be a binary add-on and provided an interface between Kodi and the outside world

Exactly! I of course meant there should be separate binary addons for each brand/type of Home Automation System, but share a common frontend GUI interface in Kodi, just like for PVR.

PVR client for Kodi are binary addons which share a common frontend GUI interface and server-client API, and it would nice if addons for Home Automation could have the same concept. So suggested project idea could be to copy the PVR concept and design a similar common frontend GUI interface and extend the addons API in Kodi, and make a reference client addon.

This would enable future support for multiple Home Automation client addons supporting many different Home Automation and Control Systems, all using a unified frontend GUI in Kodi.

[Ned Scott]

Funny enough, for the last couple of hours tonight, I have been trying to get some wifi-enabled LED bulbs working with Kodi. I would love to see something like this as well. Dimming the lights when starting a movie isn't a huge feature, but it's definitely a "wow" feature :D

[RockerC]

Funny enough, for the last couple of hours tonight, I have been trying to get some wifi-enabled LED bulbs working with Kodi. I would love to see something like this as well. Dimming the lights when starting a movie isn't a huge feature, but it's definitely a "wow" feature

Precisely! And how cool would it be if it was very easy inside Kodi to add the rolling down a motorized projector screen and closing window blinds to that sequence of dimming the lights.

Home Automation was a luxury before but is now quickly becoming less expensive and common place with big shots like Google, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft moving into this area with open APIs. These "Smart Home" and "Internet of Things" hypes has also made Home Automation one of the most popular technology area for small start-up companies on crowd-sourcing sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The fragmentation and multiple standard does however not make it easy to control everything from one location, which is where Kodi could come in.

Cheap WiFi enabled plugs that control electricity outlets allow you to very simply add ON/OFF and Dimming features to almost any device or lamp, but downside for users is that today you have use an app on your phone or tablet to control most of them, even just to turn off or on a light, and there is no easy way to automate sequences or ingrate actions into Kodi.

[jjd-uk]

I would welcome a binary add-on API for stuff like that also, for example there's a Hue Lights python add-on, but I guess a binary add-on may allow better use of the Philips SDK.

[Martijn]

the problem will all home automation currently is there's not a single (opensource) API that can be used to rule them all. Maybe open source AllJoyn SDK could bring some difference in that.

[RockerC]

the problem will all home automation currently is there's not a single (opensource) API that can be used to rule them all.

Again, you can say the exact same thing for PVR backends and Kodi. Here is where Kodi could really add value by offering a single unified GUI frontend for different/multiple backends.

This concept seem to work good for PVR, why not try to reuse that server-client idea with binary addons and add a Home Automation / Smart Home frontend GUI and addons API in Kodi?

The whole concept there is for Kodi to act as a unified PVR frontend, to only have one unified frontend GUI interface standard that always looks and acts the same no matter which PVR backends are used. Ultimately in the dream scenario there is that a user should even be able to use a cross-mix of different PVR backend servers with one client or multiple clients the same time.

So in the future you have all these different scenarios for PVR:

- Single Kodi instance/device as only PVR frontend client <=> Single PVR backend.
- Multiple Kodi instances/devices as PVR frontend clients <=> Single PVR backend.

- Single Kodi instance/device as only PVR frontend client <=> Multiple PVR backend of the same type, as in example several servers with Tvheadend.
- Multiple Kodi instances/devices as PVR frontend clients <=> Multiple PVR backend of the same type, as in example several servers with Tvheadend.

- Single Kodi instance/device as only PVR frontend client <=> Multiple PVR backend of different types, as in servers with Tvheadend, VDR, MediaPortal, and WMC server.
- Multiple Kodi instances/devices as PVR frontend clients <=> Multiple PVR backend of different types, as in servers with Tvheadend, VDR, MediaPortal, and WMC server.


The same concept could also be ideal for Home Automation?

The idea then is not to support an existing open source API, but to create a new addons API that is only used inside Kodi, and the client addons then translate it to xyz propitiatory APIs.

[da-anda]

Which features would be needed besides of dimming lights in room X, because I don't think you can easily come up with a generic UI for everything supported by home automatation out there. Also configuration of complex tasks might be a PITA to do in a 10foot interface and probably better done via a webinterface or a standalone app. So why does it have to be part of Kodi and why can't it simply be an external cross platform tool providing the generic API to be extended by addons which is using Kodis JSON-RPC (or any other OpenSource media center interface) to trigger the home automatation tasks? Such a tool might be of much more use then a stripped down Kodi integration

[mbuzina]

Which features would be needed besides of dimming lights in room X, because I don't think you can easily come up with a generic UI for everything supported by home automatation out there. Also configuration of complex tasks might be a PITA to do in a 10foot interface and probably better done via a webinterface or a standalone app. So why does it have to be part of Kodi and why can't it simply be an external cross platform tool providing the generic API to be extended by addons which is using Kodis JSON-RPC (or any other OpenSource media center interface) to trigger the home automatation tasks? Such a tool might be of much more use then a stripped down Kodi integration

You would need dimming / color setting of lights, close window blinds and roll down projector screens. Having general actors (on/off, dimmed, color, open/close) would be usefull for some maybe.

[Kib]

I agree with da-anda.
It makes much more sense that we support firing off an event on which the home automation app triggers all these actions.

[NEOhidra]

the problem will all home automation currently is there's not a single (opensource) API that can be used to rule them all. Maybe open source AllJoyn SDK could bring some difference in that.

I haven't used it but isn't OpenHAB something that unifies different automation technologies?

[Martijn]

Java.... Ugh

[Ned Scott]

I agree with da-anda.
It makes much more sense that we support firing off an event on which the home automation app triggers all these actions.

Oddly enough, some of the older systems that only rich people have are partially controlled using a TV interface. It doesn't really make much sense, though. We would want pretty much be what you describe, where watching a movie or something would trigger an event. I doubt it would be something for GSoC, but I guess someone could get really crazy with it.

From what I've read so far, depending on the system, even the more complicated actions could probably communicate directly with the base station for whatever system is being used, even just using a fairly basic python add-on.