Ive been using gentoo for about 3-4 years now, comming from debian before that.
Ive setup some webservers, fileservers, mythtv boxes, etc.. with gentoo. I currently have 6 gentoo boxes networked here in the office and 2 at home.
I have recently been hired by a security company for research and development. thyve been doing foot patrol and security cameras for a couple years and they want to expand in all directions they can.
Im am charged with putting together a linux box that will eventually combine a mythtv box with, home automation, security, security cameras, etc....etc....
the above is the final goal. these systems will be installed in everything from home to large businesses.
The mythtv box is pretty straight forward. any suggestions on hardware, cases, misc software would be welcome.
The security right now is to be handled by elk systems
http://www.smarthomeusa.com/Shop/Security/
and geovision
http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/index.asp
im not sure if these will be able to integrate with linux or not, ive done some searches and cant find enough linux info on them. we have done some research on options that were created for linux and they usually dont seem to have as many features or are as user friendly as the above mentioned systems.
as for the home automation, im not sure how that will integrate with mythtv and security. but i suspect well have to use something like what hackmyth is using
http://www.hackmyth.com/
they are using zwave technology for the home automation side, but I havent found anything on how they interface it with myth
http://new.z-wavealliance.org/content/modules/Start/
the development process will probably start off with 3-4 machines. one thats just home automation, one just mythtv, and one just camera monitoring station. and eventually merge into one box.
I was thinking about having say a login manager configured with a nice interface. the options will be
ex:
- mythtv session(mythtv starts instantly with no desktop features)
security session(boot to a minimal WM with customized to be used for security)
Automation session(maybe merge this with security)
questions:
- anyone tried to use bluetooth with any of these systems ? or is IR the best choice still.
know any good linux camera systems. we plan on having a large monitoring office that will have active security watching cameras and backup of customers files.
anyone have some good suggestions for base hardware? i really like the shuttle but it doesnt have enough pci slots. weve looked at MANY dvr computer cases.
any knowledge of integrating any of these systems with mythtv would be nice.
weve looked up info on X10 but ive read alot of horror stories about i. any suggestions on alternates ?
xadin
