So I just moved into a new office with my boss. We declined funding for funiture and paint, so instead we get money for whatever we want. My boss and I want to automate/ control everything in our office via our computers. Any reccomendations for usb i/o programmers, or programmable devices, or things we can automate?

We are thinking of things like have the doors automatically open when we lock our computers, things like that...

12/28/2008 7:01:34 PM

interesting. doesn't seem like something that has a lot of business value. i'm curious why y'all made this choice

12/28/2008 7:05:33 PM

*whew* I thought this was going to be about Office OLE automation

12/28/2008 7:06:53 PM

^^ because we work for a pretty cool company and we were allocated money that we didn't spend. Im sure we'll be pitching in some of our own money if we want anything extensive. But you are right, it has zero business value

12/28/2008 7:14:46 PM

What's your budget? Like $1k or $10k?

Are you trying to hook things up yourself?

12/28/2008 7:23:49 PM

what sort of automation are you talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_automation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation

take a look at insteon and the zigbee stuff. homeseer is a fairly awesome piece of software.

12/29/2008 10:04:44 AM

yeah, what the hell do you want automated.

If you want the place decorated, maybe you can write a script to order those services online

12/29/2008 7:57:59 PM

just setup nerf defenses and call it a day

12/29/2008 8:04:10 PM

Give me the money you wont spend. I want a new storage server for the office servers.

12/29/2008 8:06:21 PM

yeah, will be hooking the stuff up ourselves, so we can learn it too. and probably want to do all the programming as well. Our budget is pretty small, probably like 500. But for some fun stuff we might pay a little out of pocket. I was mostly looking for ideas. Our computers dont have serial ports, and I dont really know how to interface via usb. Is it possible to just use a usb/serial adapter. Is it open to low level programming like it would be if it was a serial port?

12/30/2008 10:54:52 PM

USB to serial adapter will work.. hence the name USB to serial adapter.

12/31/2008 12:44:33 AM

A friend of mine has had a lot of success with MisterHouse and X10.

Lights go on and off depending on activity from motion detectors; Closet lights are set for only a few minutes of no motion before they shut off, while den and office lights have a much longer delay. Sitting in a chair watching TV tends not to trigger detectors.

The nice thing is they could SSH into their home machine from being on vacation and check their motion detectors.

12/31/2008 8:41:04 PM