1. Automating appliances
... well a Coffee maker and a Alarm clock anyway.

2. The dream since 1985! - Commodore 64 Espresso or Espresso maker
- From the early '80's
- The Commodore 64 controls the brewing of the coffee.

3. Automating the Coffee Maker
RFC2324 – HTCPCP
RFC2325
Simply task
We turn on the coffee maker every morning at 5:30 AM
... or do we?
How do you make coffee?
- Fill the coffee maker with water
- add a new filter
- add coffee
- turn it on
- let it brew
- sometimes we set the timer to brew the coffee in the morning
Now try to automate it:
- add a module (Example: X10, Insteon or Z-Wave)
- program the computer
- does the above (except for the timer)
Not any easer is it?
To really automate the coffee we need the Coffee maker to fill with water automatically, to make sure there's a pot on the burner and we need turn it off when there is no pot or water in the pot.

4. What if devices could communicate?
Automation works better when everything can be integrated together so they can work together as one.
The Alarm Clock
- By itself it works well, but what if by setting the alarm you also set the Coffee maker to go off.
- Using Insteon (X10 isn't enough) the alarm clock tells Misterhouse (the central server) that you want to get up at 5:30 AM. You've already setup Misterhouse to make the Coffee when you wake up (so it has to know when you need to wake up). Now setting the alarm also makes Coffee. Oh Misterhouse also tells your alarm clock to wake you up with gentle music that gradually get louder or wakes you up with a nasty, loud, annoying alarm. Now I need to solve the dang snooze alarm.

5. What if devices could communicate?
and a little code:
if(time_now($Wake_Up – 0:20) && $Alarm_OK) {
$CoffeePot->set(ON); }
if(time_now($Wake_Up) && $Alarm_OK) {
$AlarmClock->ramp(GENTLE);
$AlarmClock->set(ON);
How about some example Misterhouse code?
- 1st if = turn on the Coffee Pot if the Alarm has been set and it's 20 minute before wake up time
- 2nd if = if it's time to wake up and the laram has been set gently ramp up the radio to wake me up
- The missing code is the 'device drivers for the devices (Object oriented drivers) and the code that handles getting the setting from the alarm clock.