Useful Ramblings

Revision History: 08/30/06

Written for FDC 5

Assumption: Your interface to your house wiring is a CM11.

Purpose: The readme attempts to get you up and running quickly. It is not a substitue for reading the Misterhouse documentation provided by the distribution.

This readme is based on the 2.100 release of Misterhouse, so paths etc. are going to reflect the 2.100 release. You will have to make appropriate changes to reflect your release of Misterhouse.

NOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When updating Linux with rpms it is possible that the
permissions on the serial port will change causing Misterhouse to suddenly stop issuing commands. You will get errors like:
No response from cm11. Please send an X10 signal…

To fix chmod the permissions of your serial port as indicated below.

It will then be necessary to restart misterhouse and reload the web browser.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Changes to be done prior to installing Misterhouse

A. in /etc/profile place the following line at the end:

export mh_parms=/home/mrh/mh.private.ini

B. if your are rebuilding/restoring mrh you should:

cp -R /home/mrh/misterhouse-2.100/data $HOME/data
cp /home/mrh/misterhouse-2.100/code/common/trivia.pl $HOME/code

1. create a unix user for Misterhouse, lets say “misterhouse”

2. for misterhouse vi the file .bashrc in $HOME
and export LANG=C. Failing to do this will cause the web interface to fail causing errors which imply there is no x10 control module (CM11).

3. download the Misterhouse application into “misterhouse”’s $HOME,
i.e., /home/misterhouse

4. gunzip misterhouse-2.100.tar.gz
this will generate a misterhouse-2.100.tar file

5. tar -xvf misterhouse-2.100.tar
this will create a subdirectory called: misterhouse-2.100

6. make the following custom directories in $HOME

sounds
data
code

7. chmod 666 /dev/ttyS1 (linux serial port)

8. chmod 777 /dev/dsp (linux sound card)

9. At this point you need to understand the $HOME/misterhouse-2.100/bin/mh.ini file. Take time to review this file and to understand some of the settings. In $HOME create a file called mh.private.ini. In this file place the following:

————————–cut here———————————-

#
# custom code/data directories. allows you to easily upgrade misterhouse to
# future releases
#
code_dir=/home/mrh/code
data_dir=/home/mrh/data
#
#
# X10 device type and which serial port
#
cm11_port=/dev/ttyS1

————————–cut here———————————-

10. connect your hardware (CM11) to the serial port you configured in step 7.

11. If Misterhouse fails to start try to scroll back and look for output errors. In my case I had to change an entry in the $HOME/misterhouse-2.100/bin/mh.ini. The entry was gd=1 and I needed to set it to gd=0

start misterhouse —>

cd home/mrh/misterhouse-2.99/bin

./mh &

12. If your serial ports are configured correctly and you have installed a light module with the address of “B 16″ and the light switch is turned on the then following should work:

perl test_x10 cm11 /dev/ttyS1 B 16

Note that this command is being told to use the cm11 device interface and talk to a module with an address of “B 16″ through the second serial port “/dev/ttyS1″ If you are using the first serial port “/dev/ttyS0″ then do:

perl test_x10 cm11 /dev/ttyS0 B 16

This is basic. If this does not work then you need to get this working before attempting anything else. If you are getting “checksum” errors on the CM11 device it could be that your serial ports are incorrectly configured OR you need to move your serial interface cable (they are not shielded) OR try a different outlet. The problem is most ikely NOT with your CM11 device.

In step 9 you created a mh.private.ini file with minimal configuration. This to get you up quickly to check out Misterhouse and its connection to the house through the CM11 interface. You should now read the standard documentation that came with Misterhouse so that you understand the importance of this file and what other configuration parameters are available.