[Stildawn]

Hi All

I just wondering if anyone has any knowledge or has tried this themselves and could give some pointers (or confirm that its possible).

Basically we are planning on building a new home which I will be rigging up some pretty extensive home automation solutions.

One of these ideas I have is to run a local PC in each room with a TV for use with XBMC. These local in room PC's will have XBMC installed locally but will share media from the media server as well as the library. This is fine I can easily set this up.

My question is, with home automation the server PC will be receiving all the imput commands from us the users (hopefully via voice commands). Is there a way to some how send commands from the server PC via the network into each of these local PCs to control the XBMC environment running on them? I'm thinking of something like the server PC sending keystroke commands to the local PC's (so I can navigate around XBMC).

For example, I'm in the lounge, I say "turn tv on" which sends a command via microphones to the server PC which then turns the lounge TV on via switches, XBMC will already be running on the lounge TV so it will be displayed on the TV. Now I say "TV Shows" which sends a command to the server PC via microphones, the server PC recognizes what I said and then sends the required keystrokes via the network to the local PC running XBMC in the lounge...

Does that make sense?

Cheers

[ppic]

yes possible, using json rpc

[Stildawn]

Cool. Should I just google that?

[nickr]

No it's all in the manual:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=JSON-RPC_API

[dandnsmith]

This sounds, to me, overly complex, requiring a way of sorting out those voice commands, and where they originate from.
Why not have the commands recognised locally by the local PC - then it can issue the command locally, or, if it is for the server, send it back by network.
Me - I'd just have local remote controls doing the work. If the TVs have remotes, they can communicate with the local PC and XBMC.

[turnerm]

This sounds, to me, overly complex, requiring a way of sorting out those voice commands, and where they originate from.
Why not have the commands recognised locally by the local PC - then it can issue the command locally, or, if it is for the server, send it back by network.
Me - I'd just have local remote controls doing the work. If the TVs have remotes, they can communicate with the local PC and XBMC.

+1. I'm not understanding the need for the extra complexity. I'd let the local machines control things and just have a Harmony remote in each room.

[Stildawn]

Well I am only in the early stages of planning all this so any imput/ideas are welcome.

The reason I have the server getting all the commands is that it wont just be local xbmc commands, it could be anything, ranging from "Open the door" to "See who's at the gate" to "Turn the oven on" to "Turn off my daughters TV"

Commands ranging all across the house, the voice system would be used to control the entire home automation, not just xbmc, xbmc is just one small part.

The main reason why there will be local pc's at all is cause I looked into running sound and video for multiple displays in Virtual Machines from the server, but that seemed overly complicated and problem prone.