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<blockquote data-quote="TritonT" data-source="post: 199718" data-attributes="member: 26020">Virtual Crib is very interesting, I have previously seen a few of the videos, but not got around to trying it.&nbsp; I did not see any evidence that it is Open Source yet, it does have a SourceForge page, but no source.The ease of use looks good and setting up triggers, events etc. appears to be easy.&nbsp; The amount of work he has done is amazing.However it doesn’t seem to DO anything I can’t already do using xAP and Patrick’s Basic Home Automation Plugin. I can speak in a microphone to trigger a house event.&nbsp; I have pop-ups in MediaPortal showing me state changes etc around the house.&nbsp; I can control all my devices from inside MediaPortal.&nbsp; It can send me emails. And so on.&nbsp; Its just a bit of a pain to do.There are problems for a vCrib setup.&nbsp; The person location stuff can’t work in a real environment, the only 2 viable methods I have seen are RFID and iButtons (which would require you to touchdown your button on room entry).&nbsp; X10 is a very old standard that does not report state, so your system as a whole does not know for sure whether a device is on or off.&nbsp; I get round this problem by only controlling X10 devices through xAP, so at least my system usually knows the state of a X10 device (but not for sure).&nbsp; Phidget devices seem to be the heart of the vCrib system, but I have no experience with them as there is no xAP Connector for them yet.It would certainly be possible for someone to write a Plugin for vCrib, but as it’s still in alpha and it’s userbase is so small it might be a bit early to do so.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TritonT, post: 199718, member: 26020"] Virtual Crib is very interesting, I have previously seen a few of the videos, but not got around to trying it. I did not see any evidence that it is Open Source yet, it does have a SourceForge page, but no source. The ease of use looks good and setting up triggers, events etc. appears to be easy. The amount of work he has done is amazing. However it doesn’t seem to DO anything I can’t already do using xAP and Patrick’s Basic Home Automation Plugin. I can speak in a microphone to trigger a house event. I have pop-ups in MediaPortal showing me state changes etc around the house. I can control all my devices from inside MediaPortal. It can send me emails. And so on. Its just a bit of a pain to do. There are problems for a vCrib setup. The person location stuff can’t work in a real environment, the only 2 viable methods I have seen are RFID and iButtons (which would require you to touchdown your button on room entry). X10 is a very old standard that does not report state, so your system as a whole does not know for sure whether a device is on or off. I get round this problem by only controlling X10 devices through xAP, so at least my system usually knows the state of a X10 device (but not for sure). Phidget devices seem to be the heart of the vCrib system, but I have no experience with them as there is no xAP Connector for them yet. It would certainly be possible for someone to write a Plugin for vCrib, but as it’s still in alpha and it’s userbase is so small it might be a bit early to do so. [/QUOTE]

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